INTELLIGENCE REPORT THE PURGE OF LIN PIAO'S ' CONSPIRATORIAL CLIQUE': A TENTATIVE RECONSTRUCTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001000010047-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 104
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 5, 2010
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: July 1, 1972
• Content Type: IR

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Top Secret
DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Report
The Purge of Lin Piao's "Conspiratorial Clique":
A Tentative Reconstruction
(Reference Title: POLO XL VIII)
ILLEGIB
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Top Secret
July 1972
Copy No. 13
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THE PURGE OF LIN PIAO'S "CONSPIRATORIAL CLIQUE":
A TENTATIVE RECONSTRUCTION
MEnORANDUM FOR RECIPIENTS
This tentative reconstruction of the Lin Piao
affair accepts as largely credible the case which the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made against Lin and
his confederates. This conclusion is based upon a
spliced-together examination of (a) developments ob-
served prior to the dramatic events of last year's
'purges, and (b) the CCP's story of those events, as
that story has become available)
Addi-
tional Party materials and other documentation-- almost
certain to become available -- will permit a filling out
and firming up of the causes, particulars, and signi-
ficance of the fall of Lin.
This present paper centers on Lin and his known
proteges, their power position, their challenge to Mao,
their subsequent fall, and what can be seen of the
present leadership, arrangements made by Mao and Chou
En-lal. A companion study now in preparation by this
Staff will focus on domestic and foreign policy issues
related to the fall of Lin's group and to the present
leadership arrangements.
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This Staff has received constructive comment on
this study from a number of other offices of the Central
Intelligence Agency, all of whom agree on the credibility
of the essentials of the CCP's case against Lin, and
several of whom agree in general with other findings of
this study. Further comments will be welcome, addressed
to the study's author of this Staff.
Hal Ford
Chief, DD/I Special Research Staff
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THE PURGE OF LIN PIAO'S "CONSPIRATORIAL CLIQUE":
A TENTATIVE RECONSTRUCTION
Available evidence now permits a reconstruction,
with fair confidence, of the decline and dramatic fall
of Lin Piao and other top-ranking Chinese military leaders.
This reconstruction accepts as credible the essentials
of the case against Lin and his proteges
/ The main
features of the Party's story of the past four years
are consonant with certain developments -- notably or-
ganizational and policy changes -- observed but not fully
understood at the time, and are consonant also with the
past patterns of thought and behavior of the principal
actor, Mao Tse-tung.
In brief, by early 1970 Mao had changed his mind
about the suitability of Lin as his successor, and he
was also looking for high-level scapegoats for a range
of repudiated "ultraleftist" policies undertaken at
various times during the Cultural Revolution. Mao began
soon thereafter to undercut Lin's position organiza-
tionally. In response, Lin, in alliance with a "radical"
civilian Party leader. and some other military leaders,
chose to contest Mao's will at the Party plenum of late
summer 1970, on the issue of the chairmanship of the
regime. Mao prevailed, and took further organizational
steps against Lin which were visible to Lin. By early
1971, Lin and his proteges had concluded correctly that
it was Mao's intention ultimately to purge them.\
/Again, as at the plenum
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they underestimated the awe and responsiveness that Mao
inspired: in this case, his ability to command the
obedience of other military leaders, even the great
majority of the plotters' own proteges. When Lin's
plans for a coup were frustrated, he attempted to flee
to the USSR, dying in the attempt, and his closest
proteges were seized and purged. Mao is now again faced
with the difficult task of putting together a successor
leadership, as he was at the beginning of the Cultural
Revolution.
The Period of High Favor, 1966-69
The enigmatic and sickly military leader Lin Piao
was designated (surprisingly) as Mao's successor in
August 1966, in the first year of the massive purge of
the Chinese Communist Party, government and military
establishment known as the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution. Mao's main targets at the time were Liu
Shao-chi (his then-designated successor) and other
leading figures of the Party apparatus, an apparatus
which Mao believed to be obstructing his policies. In
that first year Lin seemed to establish himself as a
hard-core Maoist in both senses of the term: completely
loyal to Mao, and predisposed to the same militant,
radical line that Mao himself favored in that period.
Both Mao and Lin appeared to have differences with the
more moderate Premier Chou En-lai.
In the second year, when China was in effect
under military occupation by the PLA which Lin headed,
Lin's position became more complicated. His generally
"conservative" PLA came under attack by mass organi-
zations encouraged by civilian radicals in the Party
leadership, the officers of a special purging organ
called the Cultural Revolution Group (CRG). Sometimes
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Lin seemed to act to protect PLA leaders, and sometimes
he di6 not. Chou En-lai and his proteges also came under
"radical" attack, and Chou had to intervene with Mao
to reverse Peking's counter-productive "revolutionary"
diplomacy. Some second-level leaders of the CRG were
purged, in part as scapegoats for repudiated policies.
In the third year of the Cultural Revolution, in
the face of the Soviet threat, Mao put down the militant
mass organizations, placed the provisional organs of
government throughout China largely in the hands of
military leaders, and prepared to build the new provincial-
level Party committees around these same military men.
In this period, Mao, Lin, Chou and the remaining CRG
leaders seemed to be working tcgether to these ends.
Throughout those zigs and zags of the Cultural
Revolution, Lin had steadily strengthened his personal
position. He had named his closest proteges to concurrent
positions in the most important organs of command and
control of the PLA, he had reorganized the Military Region
headquarters to place almost all of them under the command
of his proteges, and' he' had secured the appointment Gf
such proteges to the most important provincial posts con-
currently. This was the shape of an "independent kingdom,"
should Mao ever come to regard it as that.
Mao did indeed come to regard it as that. However,
at the end of the third year, in April 1969, when the
Party's long-delayed' Ninth Party Congress was held, Lin
Piao seemed to get Mao's blessing in all that he had done.
Lin gave the main report to the Congress, and the new
Party Constitution confirmed him as Mao's successor with-
out an election -- thus heading off any possible election,
after Mao's death, of the more popular Chou En-lai. The
new Central Committee (more than 40 percent PLA) named
a new Politburo in which PLA figures constituted the
largest group, and in which Lin and five of his closest
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proteges seemed to form the most cohesive group. This
group consisted of Lin, chief-of-staff Huang Yung-sheng,
Air Force commander Wu Fa-hsien, Navy leader Li Tso-peng,
Logistics chief Chiu Hui-tso, and Lin's wife and staff
office chief Yeh Chun. (This group of six was to be
the core of the "counter-revolutionary conspiratorial
clique" purged in September 1971.) At the same time,
Mao in a speech to the first Party plenum voiced his con-
cern about the responsiveness of the PLA to the civilian
Party leadership. In other words, the issue that had
led to th,..2 downfall of the Party-machine leaders around
Liu Shao-chi in the first year of the Cultural Revolu-
tion -- the responsiveness of the governing apparatus
to Mao's will -- was re-emerging with the new apparatus,
the PLA.'
Lin's Decline in Mao's Regard, 1969-70
It is apparent in retrospect that at some time
in the year following the Ninth Party Congress Mao
changed his mind about Lin as his successor. Mao's in-
creasing concern about the responsiveness of the PLA
-- for which Lin as its leader was responsible --
evidently le( Mao to conclude that Lin himself was not
properly responsive. As a related matter, Lin and others
may well have been unwilling to accept the new Mao-Chou
line -- formulated in 1969, withdrawn for a time in 1970,
later restored -- that the USSR had become the main enemy
of China, replacing the U.S. in that role; and Mao may
have been made aware that Lin's group did not accept this.
Further, Lin and his proteges may well have carried out
the "preparations against war" campaign in such a way as
to enhance theirzown power position, as later charged.
Further, the investigation of the "5/16" group -- a
hypermilitant mass organization which had sought in 1967
to bring down Chou En-lai and which symbolized not only
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a range of repudiated ultraleftist policies but the funda-
mental sin of "conspiracy" and the ancillary practice of
political assassination -- may well have turned up some-
thing damaging to Lin and some of his proteges. And with
the decline and dissolution of the Cultural Revolution Group,
Lin and Chou En-lai -- who during 1969 apparently became
Mao's principal advisor and favorite lieutenant -- may
well have come into conflict with respect to supervising
and directing the re-emerging Party apparatus. Finally,
Mao needed some additional scapegoats -- this time, high-
level scapegoats -- for the self-defeating excesses of the
Cultural Revolution.
In any case, in March 1970 Mao made a proposal
which Lin rightly interpreted as reflecting a lack of
confidence in him. This was the proposal not to restore
the post of Chairman of the regime. Lin thought the
post important, presumably because the Chairman would
be the ranking officer of the government (over Premier
Chou) and also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Thus Mao's attitude toward the post, and toward its
eventual occupancy by Lin, was a critical test of Mao's
attitude toward Lin himself.
Mao apparently began to take organizational steps
against Lin, steps securing Mao's own control of Peking,
during the summer of 1970, prior to the second Party
plenum of August-September 1970. On 1 June, Wen Yu-cheng,
a key protege of Lin's, the commander of the Peking Gar-
rison -- a critical post, commanding the immediately
available military forces in Peking -- made his last ap-
pearance, and was probably removed from the post soon
thereafter. Althcugh his successor was not identified
until 1971, from summer 1970 no leaders of the Peking
Garrison were proteges of Lin's. Morerver, by August
1970 the leadership of the reactivated General Political
Department of the PLA was in the hands not of proteges
of Lin but of proteges of other military leaders. Lin
probably saw both developments as further indicators of
his decline in favor.
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At the Party plenum of August-September 1970,
Lin and the civilian radical Chen Po-ta, who had been
the chief of the abolished CRG, forced a test on the
issue of the regime chairmanship. Presumably in the
belief that they could win majority support, they led a
concerted effort to get the post rAnstated -- apparently
with Mao himself to occupy it for the time being but with
Lin to fall heir to it. Mao refused. Chen Po-ta was
soon purged, in part for his opposition to Mao on this
issue. Lin and his closest military proteges, ? whose
roles at this plenum were concealed at the time, are
now said credibly to have been criticized by Mao after
the plenum for their own behavior. In Chen and Lin,
Mao now had his high-level scapegoats, for whatever use
he wanted to put them to.
Late in 1970, two more key military figures in
Peking were purged. These were the commander and first
political., officer of the Peking Military Region, charged
with conspiring with Chen Po-ta. Again their successors
were not identified at the time, but
here again Lin failed to install
his own men in these critically important positions.
hthis latest failure
was an important if not decisive factor in leading Lin
to conclude that he was already marked for purging, as
indeed he probably was.
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In Mao's conversations with Edgar Snow in that
period (late 1970), there was a'striking lack of refer-
ence to Lin. Mao had evidently stopped talking about Lin
as his successor or anything else. Snow learned that
Chou En-lai, not Lin as earlier reported, was "in charge"
of rebuilding the Party. And in outlining to Snow their
new foreign policy (which included a declared willingness
to welcome President Nixon), Mao and Chou failed to as-
sociate Lin (as the successor) with it.
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The Approach to the Crisis, 1971
It is credible
that Lin and his closest proteges began as early as January
1971 to plan a military "coup" of some kind against Mao.
It is apparent from subsequent developments that they again
overestimated their own strength and underestimated Mao's.
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In the early months of 1971, Mao was again visibly
concerned with those failings of military administrators
in general -- summarized at thl time as "arrogance and
complacency" -- that he had begun to warn against at the
Ninth Party Congress. An intensive "rectification" of
all Party cadres -- in which the military were most
prominent -- was undertaken. There was probably a small
purge of the PLA -- not reaching to the top levels -- at
the same time. Many secondary military figures disappeared
am- are still missing.
During the spring of 1971, Mao continued to ap-
prove the appointment of military men -- including Lin's
proteges -- to key positions in Peking and in the prov-
inces. This must have reflected a calculation -- which
was to prove correct in summer 1971 -- that in the event
of a showndown with Lin he would be able to split off from
Lin the great majority of these proteges.(
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It seems likely that by June 1971 Mao had an addi-
tional reason to purge Lin's group: namely, its opposition
to the Mao-Chou foreign policy, in particular to the plans
for President Nixon's visit, an initiative to which Mao
and Chou were strongly committed. While such opposition
cannot be proved,
foreign policy was a genuine (if secondary)
issue in the purge.
Lin Piao made his last public appearance in early
June. Mao may have begun soon thereafter the talks with
regional and provincial military-political leaders in
which he successfully sought assurances of their support
in a showdown with Lin's group. Party briefings place
Mao outside of Peking for most of the summer after the
first week of July, and place him in South China -- engaged
in such talks with a group of Lin's regional proteges --
in mid-August. Mao's interests in Peking were being
protected by Party and military leaders in whom he had
confidence -- e.g. Chou En-lai, the old Marshal Yeh Chien-
ying (the two Chinese principals in the first talks with
Dr. Kissinger), the General Political Dvartment director
and possible Peking MR commander Li Te-sheng, and Peking
Garrison commander Wu Chung.
The Crisis, August-September 1971
In Mao's talks in mid-August with leaders of the
Central-South area, in which proteges of both Lin Piao
and Huang Yung-sheng were heavily clustered, Mao spoke
of Lin and Huang as conspirators and of Lin as a com-
missioner of assassinations, and made clear that he
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intended to purge at least those two.
/ On 7 September,
Lin apparently took his family, on a Trident aircraft,
to the summer resort of Peitaiho, not far from Peking,
to await developments -- possibly including the results
of an attempted assassination of Mao. The Party insists
that Lin's group attempted to activate their assassina-
tion plan in early September, although almost all accounts
agree that they were unable to do so: that is, no bullet
was fired, no bomb was exploded. While it does seem very
likely that Lin and his proteges had decided by that
time that it would indeed be necessary to kill Mao, it
is impossible on present evidence to judge whether they
did in fact attempt to do so in early September.
learned simply of Lin's plans.
/Mao may, however, have
In any case, Mao returned to Peking on 12 September,
prepared to take immediate action against Lin in Party
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counr;i1s. A meeting of Party leaders -- perhaps largely
or military leaders -- was convened that same evening,
either by Mao or by Chou En-lai in Mao's name. This
meeting was very probably protected by security forces
of the Peking Garrison. At the meeting, Mao's intention
to purge Lin and his supporters was almost certainly
made known.
Lin and his wife and son -- leaving Lin's proteges
behind in Peking -- were probably (as alleged) aboard
the elite Trident aircraft which took off hurriedly from
an airfield near Peitaiho after midnight on the night
of 12-13 September and which crashed and burned at about
0300 on 13 September near the Soviet border, on a line
with the big air complex at Irkutsk. (Alternatively,
they were seized at Peitaiho, while lesser figures fled,
and were soon executed.) The air standdown was appar-
ently imposed immediately following this flight. Lin's
principal proteges in Peking were condemned in the course
of a prolonged meeting ending about 25 September. Chou
En-lai and Yeh Chien-ying were particularly helpful to
Mao in managing the crisis through this period.
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The Post-Lin Line and Leadership
The handling of this intensely embarrassing case,
for both domestic and foreign audiences, has been a hard
problem for Party leaders. The Party at first attempted
to conceal the fall of Lin's group, telling even its
own cadres that the missing leaders were engaged in mili-
tary preparations against a Soviet threat. Briefings
of Chinese audiences/
/did
not begin until October. Deception of foreigners was
intense through October and into November, and has con-
tinued: Chinese officials have still not admitted to
foreigners -- in fact have denied -- that Lin is dead.
Neither Lin nor any member of his group has been
mentioned by China's public media. Lin's association with
Mao -- e.g., in the "little red book" -- has been erased.
There has been a selective discussion of the case in
terms of "swindlers like Liu Shao-chi," emphasizing
conspiracy and illicit organizational activity, and
associating the purged group by implication with foreign
enemies and with various rejected policies.
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The PLA has been told repeatedly that it is to
be subordinated to the civilian Party leadership, that
opposition to Party policies (including foreign policy)
will not be tolerated, that Party policies must be
faithfully implemented, that the PLA must learn humility,
and that the authority of military administrators vis-
a-vis civilian Party cadres is in general to be reduced.
In other words, the PLA is to be returned to a more
nearly traditional role.
The Party is promising at the same time that an
obedient and humble PLA need not fear another large-scale
purge, on the order of 1966-67, A fairly substantial
purge has already been carried outA
The purge has clearly
not been completed at any level, and the number of
victims may rise considerably in the course of the next
year.
Mao looks to be still the Party's dominant figure,
in the terms used by himself in late 1970: he points
the general direction, formulates or approves the
formulation of the regime's principal policies, and
signs directives, leaving day-to-day operations to Chou
En-lai and Chou's Party apparatus and government machinery.
And he is probably still dominant in the sense of having
the power to elevate or purge any other Party leader or
small group of leaders.
Mao's domination is increasingly qualified.
is old, his health is probably deteriorating
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and he has lost pres-
tige. It is doubtful that he could point China in any
general direction other than the onehe has been taking
-- that is, it is doubtful that he could turn hard left
again. He relies on a chief lieutenant, Chou, who sees
many things differently than he does. And he is still
heavily dependent on the PLA. If he were to choose to
replace Chou's group or to return the PLA fully to its
traditional role, it seems unlikely that he would have
the time to do either. Increasingly, Mao's lieutenants
will be looking past him to the post-Mao situation
Nevertheless, the main lesson of the past ten
years, for other Party leaders, has to be that one chal-
lenges Mao, or takes action behind his back, only at
great peril. Other Party leaders, while making arrange-
ments for their futures, will probably try above all not
to provoke the old man's suspicion or hostility in his
remaining time. The chief near-term threat to Mao, how-
ever marginal, from other leaders, looks still to be
assassination. Mao's fear of it may have been a factor
in his failure to appear on May Day.
Chou En-lai's status and authority have been
greatly enhanced. At the head of the Party apparatus
and the government machinery, he has apparently been
acquiring authority as well over the military establish-
ment. The general direction of Chinese policy since
1969 has clearly been congenial to Chou, and President
Nixon's visit was a visible personal triumph for him.
As observed during that visit, Chou takes pains not to
appear to be challenging Mao: he is deferential to Mao,
he gives Mao the credit for formulating even those
policies he himself has formulated, and he is meticulous
in getting Mao's approval for important steps. The
clever Chou will probably survive and prosper.
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Mao and Chou -- now the only other primary leader
are proceeding carefully and deliberately with the task
of assembling another successor leadership. They are
now operating with a relatively small central team,
composed both of old comrades of Mao's and Chou's and of
younger figures who rose during the Cultural Revolution.
The military leaders are, of course, largely a new set,
and are not proteges of any single military leader, as
were those purged with Lin Piao.
Because it is hard at best to carry out Mao's
policies to his satisfaction, and because mismatched
groups of leaders can be expected to continue to com-
pete for Mao's (and Chou's) favor, some members of the
current team -- both military and civilian -- will
probably fall. Should Mao die, Chou could probably
dominate the leadership (although not to the same
degree/, and could be expected to make further changes,
reducing the importance of Maoist ideology and of the
surviving ideologues. Should both Mao and Chou die in
the next year or two, no single figure among the sur-
viving leaders would seem strong enough to dominate.
Ironically, the PLA, put down so hard in the past year,
would in those circumstances probably be in the best
position to provide the dominant group.
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ANNEX
THE PURGE OF LIN PIAO'S "CONSPIRATORIAL CLIQUE":
A TENTATIVE RECONSTRUCTION
Contents
Page
I. THE PERIOD OF HIGH FAVOR, 1966-69 A-1
II. LIN 'S DECLINE IN MAO'S REGARD, 1969-70 . . A-13
III. THE APPROACH TO THE CRISIS, 1971 A-29
IV. THE CRISIS, AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1971 A-45
V. THE POST-LIN LINE AND LEADERSHIP A-61
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ANNEX
I. The Period of High Favor, 1966-69
In the first year of the Cultural Revolution
(officially beginning in May 1966), Lin Piao seemed to
establish himself as a hard-core Maoist "radical," who
cooperated with Chen Po-ta and other civilian radicals
of the central Cultural Revolution Group in destroying
the Chinese Communist Party and purging the Chinese
Communist armed forces (PLA) which he headed. In the
second year, Lin's position seemed more complicated, as
his generally "conservative" PLA came under attack by
those same "radicals." He used that year to bring the
PLA under the domination of his own proteges and to
install such proteges in key positions in the re-emerging
governmental machinery and Party apparatus, thus beginning
to build an "independent kingdom." At the end of the
third year, Lin seemed to have Mao's blessing in what
he had done: the new Party Constitution confirmed him
as Mao's successor, and Lin and his closest proteges
became the largest cohesive group in the new Politburo.
This was the group that was to be purged in September
1971.
The New Successor: The great purge of the
Chinese Communist hierarchy which took place under the
banner of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"
actually began in December 1965, with the arrest of the
PLA's chief-of-staff and political security supervisor,
and of other leaders believed to be plotting a "coup."
The Cultural Revolution began officially in May 1966,
when a Central Committee circular made clear that a great
purge of "the party, the government, and the army" lay
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ahead.* The same circular set up a central Cultural
Revolution Group, outslde the Party apparatus, to collduct
the purge; its officers were a group of civilian radicals,
led by Mao's longtime factotum Chen Po-ta and including
Madame Mao. At the same time, Lin Piao, in the main
speech to an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, denounced
several arrested Party leaders, spoke at great length
of the importance of preventing a "coup," called for
resolute support of Chairman Mau and adherence to his
"thought," and promised harsh punishment to Mao's op-
ponents.
While Mao was preparing to unveil the young
Red Guards as the main instrument to attack the Party,
the Central Committee met in early August 1966 to approve
Mao's design for the Revolution and his rearrangement
of the Party hierarchy, in particular his purge of his
previously-designated successor, Liu Shao-chi.
/ Lin emerged from this
as the sole vice-chairman of the Party and thue the
newly-designated suocessor to Mao. The plenum .onfirmed
Chou En-lai as the third-ranking Party leader, and added
Chen Po-ta (among others) to the Politburo standing
committee, the organizational core of power in China. In
the same period, Lin told PLA leaders that the harsh
standards used to purge the Party were also to be used
to purge the PLA, and he named Chen Po-ta's deputy, Madame
Mao, as "advisor" to (de facto chief of) a special
Cultural Revolution Group which was to be used to conduct
this purge of the PLA.
*A group of Party-machine figures purged at this time
-- spring 1966 -- was also charged with plotting a "coup."
This was to be a central charge against many of the high-
level Party leaders purged in the Cultural Revolution,
and was eventually to be made against Lin Piao himself.
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Lin and the Purge of the PLA: The Red Guards made
their appearance in mid-August, and began -- on Mao's
explicit directive -- to "bombard" the Party apparatus.
Their continuing guidance came from Lin Piao (in general
terms) and from Chou En-lai and the officers of the
central CRG (in more specific terms). From the start,
there were marked differences in the lines taken by
Lin and the CRG leaders on one hand and Chou on the
other: Lin and the civilian radicals of the CRG tended
to incite militancy and violence, whereas Chou did not.
Chou probably had from the start a good sense
of where mindless militancy would lead. He could juL .e
in the autumn of 1966 that it would seriously disrupt
the work of his government machinery and in particul,r
the conduct of his longtime specialty, foreign policy.
Mao himself foreshadoweu the extension of the Cultural
Revolution into foreign policy by calling in September
1966 for the "revolutioni.zation" of Chinese missions abroad
and of Peking's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And Lin
Piao soon added his voice to those calling for attacks
on the government -- the entire structure over which
Chou as Premier presided -- as well as on the Party.
0.
During the early winter of 1966-67, Lin Piao
backed Madame Mao (in the starring role) in a widening
purge of the PLA. This purge removed the second-ranking
officer of the Military Affairs Committee (MAC, the Party
organ which directed and controlled the entire military
establishment), who was also accused of plotting a "coup,"
and removed as well many other central and regional
military leaders, several of whom were said to be co-
conspirators in a planned "coup." Those purged were not
proteges of Lin himself.
Mao ordered the PLA into action as an instrument
of the Cultural Revolution early in 1967. The PLA
rapidly became the de facto government of China outside
Peking, and it took over the regime's public security
apparatus. Thereafter, Lin continued methodically to
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purge the PLA and to reorganize the regional a. provincill
military commands, but in small groups, not risking a
general revolt which would lead to chaos.
During this stage of the Cultural Revolution,
some of Lin's longtime military proteges came under
Red Guard attack, and Lin had to take action to save
them. Several proteges and friends of Chou En-lai's
also came under such attack. Chou, at that time less
close to Mao than was Lin, was less successful than Lin
in protecting his proteges. At the same time, a "revolu-
tionary rebel" group -- the adult successors of the
young Red Guards -- began to "supervise" (that is,
disrupt) the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the months
to follow, Chinese missions abroad were to be turned into
centers for the propFlgation of various extreme features
of Mao's "thought," leading -- as Chou En-lai probably
foresaw -- to counteraction by local governments,
retaliation or "revolutionary" lines by Peking, and the
international isolation of Peking.
Through the spring of 1967, Lin remained generally
militant in.his attitude toward the PLA as a whole. Fol-
lowing Mao's judgment in March 1967 that the PLA in restor-
ing order had acted too vigorously against mass organiza-
tions, Lin in late March imposed severe restrictions on
the PLA's use of force against such organizations, thus
putting the PLA at a disadvantage against its young
antagonists, and probably alienating some PLA leaders
from Lin himself. This containment of the PLA was pre-
dictably folloaed by a wave of unprecedented violence
on the part oi mass organizations, which led in turn to
a new stage of the Cultural Revolution in which Lin was
forced to play a more complicated role.
Lin and his Proteges: Rather than authorizing the
PLA to use the necessary force against mass organizations,
Mao -- whose progeny these organizations were -- chose at
first to try to negotiate agreements among contending
mass organizations, or, where necessary, to choose among
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them. In July 1967, the already agitated situation was
made much worse when an MR commander refused to cooperate
with a delegation from Peking which was dealing with
mass organizations in his area. The MR commander was
quickly broken, and Lin himself -- still clearly in a
"radical" position -- threatened action against other
such communders. In late July, Red Flag, the Party
theoretical journal supervised by Chen Po-ta, head of the
central CRG, called unmistakably for another substantial
purge of the PLA. This call was in the spirit of Mao's
earlier directives, and may have been explicitly approved
by Mao (who was out of Peking at the time). Lin's response
to this call still cannot be evaluated with confidence.
On one hand, he called other MR leaders to Peking to
give them some tough "instructions" -- inter alia, to
obey orders from Chen Po-ta's CRG. On the other hand, he
did not associate himself with the late July call for a
larger purge. Possibly acting on new orders from Mao,
other Party leaders -- including Chen Po-ta -- soon with-
drew the call for a larger purge. In late August, Mao
himself went on record as opposed to a larger purge.
Lin took early action to reshape the PLA/CRG,
the special group charged earlier with purging the PLA.
The previously ultramilitant Madame Mao was dropped from
the group (surely with Mao's approval). Lin reorganized
the PLA/CRG around a group of his own longtime and now
closest proteges, some of whom had been under Red Guard
attack earlier in the year, but who were not clearly iden-
tified with either "radical" or "conservative" positions.
These included Wu Fa-hsien (the Air Force commander),
Li Tso-peng (the Navy's first political officer), Chiu
Hui-tso (the chief of Logistics) and Yeh Chun (Lin's
wife, and the head of his staff office). All were to be
accused in 1971 of conspiring with Lin against Mao.
In the same period (August 1967), violence against
objectives in an area of Chou En-lai's concern -- the Ministry
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of Foreign Affairs, the foreign minister, and foreign
missions -- reached its highest ?oint. This violence
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went so far as to place the Foreign Ministry under "revo-
lutionary rebel" control for a time, and culminated in the
burning of the British mission and the beating of British
officials in late August. Chou moved quickly -- appar-
ently intervening with Mao -- to regain control of the
Ministry, to prevent the purge of his protege the foreign
minister (although the latter became inactive), and to
prohibit further violence against foreign missions.*
Soon thereafter, with Mao now persuaded (whether
by events or by persons) that the Revolution had moved
too far to the left, Party leaders denounced the so-called
"5/16 Group," an exceptionally militant mass organization.
This group was to serve as the symbol of two discredited
policies -- violence and threats against the PLA, and
the whole spectrum of "Red Guard diplomacy" -- and, even
more importantly, the offenses of "conspiracy" and
political assassination. In September 1967, three
secondary leaders of the CRG were purged -- in part for
their own excesses, in part as scapegoats for the failure
of policies which at one time Mao himself had encouraged.
*Lin Piao's personal position on "Red Guard diplomacy"
is not known. However, his earlier writings related to
foreign affairs had strongly encouraged "people's war"
against other governments, and had shown little sense of
the value of conventional diplomacy. Moreover, Lin had
joined Mao in June 1967 in giving a hero's welcome (Ilome
from Indonesia) to the Chinese foreign officer who was
soon to lead the attacks on the Foreign Ministry and
foreign missions. At least so long as his own proteges
were not under attack, Lin seemed in general to encourage
radical" -- .2ven extreme -- initiatives.
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However, Chen Po-ta and his close associate Madame Mao
remained in Mao's favor.
Soon thereafter -- sometime before January 1968 --
Lin Piao replaced the PLA/CRG with a Political Work Group
which had roughly the same area of concern (indoctrina-
tion, examination and evaluation of PLA leaders), and
he made it more responsive to the MAC -- through the MAC
administrative unit -- than the PLA/CRG had been. The
fortunes of Chen Po-ta's central CPG continued to decline,
as in February 1968 another CRG leader was purged, and
Chen himself may have had to make a self-criticism. In
March, however, the CRG was able temporarily to reverse
its decline. One of Lin Piao's own proteges, his C/S,
gave the CRG this opportunity, by ordering the arrest
of certain CRG staffers (probably PLA men) against the
wishes of Madame Mao. The Madame prevailed, and the C/S
and two other important military leaders, including the
commander of the Peking Garrison, were purged. In the
late March meeting which surfaced this case, Lin and Chou
En-lai were both very deferential to the offended Madame
Mao, and joined in praising the record of the central CRG
in the Cultural Revolution. Ironically, Lin charged the
purged group with the offenses which were to be attributed
to himself and some other of his proteges in 1971 -- "con-
spiring," "plotting," "double-dealing," and building a
"mountain stronghold." Indeed, Lin was already building
a stronghold. This meeting announced two close proteges
of Lin's -- Huang Yung-sheng and Wen Yu-cheng -- as
respectively the new C/S of the PLA and the new commander
of the Peking Garrison.
In subsequent months, there was a striking trend
in the staffing of China's provincial-level "revolutionary
committees," the provisional organs of government while
the Party was being rebuilt. The chairmanships of almost
all of the provincial-level committees formed in this
period were given to career military men. When the
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establishment of these committees was completed in
September 1968, the great majority were in military
hands, and of the 11 most important of them -- in the
provinces containing the Military Region headquarters
all but one were in the hands of apparent proteges of
Lin Piao.*
Lin took several actions in that period of March -
September 1968 to strengthen his position in the military
establishment. His close protege Huang Yung-sheng, the
new C/S, became concurrently the secretary-general of
the MAC and the chief of the administrative unit which
supervised the Political Work Group (the de facto General
Political Department). And Lin reorganizTa the MAC
standing committee, its administrative unit, and the
General Staff -- the regime's three most important organs
in command and control of the PLA -- around his proteges.
The most important of these proteges -- Huang Yung-sheng
(who as C/S was the head of the ground forces), Wu Fa-
hsien (the CCAF commander), Li Tso-peng (the Navy poli-
tical officer), Chiu Hui-tso (the Logistics chief), and
Wen Yu-cheng (the Peking Garrison commander) held lead-
ing posts in all three of these critical organs concur-
rently. This clustering of Lin's proteges demonstrated
*In this same period, beginning in May 1968 and con-
tinuing until the Ninth Congress in April 1969, Mao was
presenting some 14 people as China's most elite leaders,
his first team. Among the 14 were Lin and four of his
aforementioned closest proteges: Huang Yung-sheng, Wu
Fa-hsien, Yeh Chun, and Wen Yu-cheng.
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strikingly his domination of the central military lead-
ership. The picture was almost as striking at the
regional level.*
As of autumn 1968, the high-priority task was to
provide a "hard core" of Party leadership within the
revolutionary committee structure throughout China. Mao
-- one would suppose, with Lin's hearty agreement --
apparently meant to have the military leaders already in
*Five of the 11 MR headquarters were under the commands
of apparent proteges of Lin when the Cultural Revolution
began: Shenyang, Nanking, Canton (three of the four most
important), Tsinan, and Foochow. Two more -- Chengtu and
Wuhan -- were reorganized in 1967 to come under the command
of proteges of Lin. Two more -- Kunmi4 and Urumcht -- were
reorganized to the same end in 1968. Another -- Lanchow --
was to be reorganized in 1969. (These regional proteges
in general were not as close to Lin as were his proteges
in the central military leadership: that is, they were
not given the same degree of preferment during the Cultural
Revolution, and did not work as intimately with Lin. But
they were proteges in the conventional sense of the term:
they had spent much of their careexs under Lin's command,
had been advanced by him after he became Minister of
Defense in 1959, and had beer shown favor by him in the
Cultural Revolution.) The eteventh and most important
-- the Peking MR -- was not under the command of proteges
of Lin in this sense. However, from 1.967 to 1970 it was
under the command of Cheng Wei-shan ?commander) and Li
Hsueh-feng (political officer), who were both purged late
in 1970 for conspiring w,;th Chen Po-ta. Lin himself was
later to be charged with conspiring with those three in
1970. In other words, the Peking MR until late 1970 was
controlled -- if the Party can be believed -- by men tied
e.ien more closely to Lin than were his recognized proteges.
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place in the revolutionary committees dominate the provin-
cial-level Party committees as well. Authority in assembl-
ling and approving these Party committees was apparently
divided between the military leaders outside Peking on
one hand and the civilians of the central CRG on the other.
That is, the "cores" of the forthcoming Party committees
were apparently being proposed by the military men on the
spot in the provinces and major municipalities, and were
being approved by the CRG. In other words, Lin's PLA
and Chen Po-ta's CRG were apparently working well together
in 1968.
The Ninth Party Congress: Lin Piao made the main
political report to the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969.
Chinese Communist briefings since Lin's fall have suggested
that Mao was not pleased with Lin's report, but it is hard
to fix on any part of that report which could have offended
Mao at the time.
In discussing Party-rebuilding, Lin's emphasis was
on the need to put Party leadership at all levels in the
hands of "true" Marxists. He meant Maoists, which as
Mao and Lin had always defined it meant men who would
follow Mao's lead wherever it took them.
In reviewing foreign affairs, Lin took the
approved line. He denounced both the United States ("the
most ferocious enemy of the people of the whole world")
and the USSR ("the Soviet revisionist renegade clique"),
and strongly stated Peking's policy of support of "revolu-
tionary struggles" everywhere. While expressing Peking's
favor for a negotiated settlement of the Sino-Soviet border
dispute and for "peaceful coexistence" with the West, Lin
called for preparations against a war launched by either
the U.S. or USSR (or both).
This Ninth Party Congress adopted a new Party Con-
stitution with an unprecedented provision confirming Lin
Piao as Mao's successor without an election (thus heading
off any possible election, after Mao's death, of the
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more popular Chou En-lai), and providing for the Polit-
buro standing committee to reconstruct whatever central
Party apparatus it might need. The Constitution did not
provide for a new Party Secretariat, as the concept was
still in disfavor and the central CRG was still acting
as a de facto secretariat.
The Ninth Party Congress went on to name a Central
Committee composed in largest part (more than 40 percent)
of PLA figures. This new Central Committee "elected" Mao
and Lin as its only officers and named a five-man standing
committee of the Politburo, identical with the de facto
standing committee since 1966. This standing committee
was composed of Mao, Lin, Chou, and the two ranking leaders
of the CRG: Chen Po-ta, with whom Lin was later to be linked
as a co-conspirator, and Kang Sheng, a security specialist
who was to be sidelined in 1970 when Chen was purged.
The new Politburo included Lin and five of the close
proteges of Lin discussed above -- Huang, Wu, Li, Chiu,
and Lin's wife.* It also included two somewhat less
close proteges of Lin, the Shenyang and Nanking Military
Region commanders Chen Hsi-lien and Hsu Shih-yu, and a
protege of one of these proteges. Thus the PLA leaders
constituted the largest group in the Politburo, and Lin
and his closest proteges the most cohesive group in it.
However, Lin's men did not constitute a majority. There
uas clearly some distance yet for Lin to go, if he were
to dominate either the Politburo standing committee or
the full Politburo.
Mao in his late April 1969 speech to the first
plenum of the new Central Committee admonished the PLA's
military administrators throughout China to do a better
job. While rejecting the Soviet charge that the military
*Another close protege, Wen Yu-cheng, the Peking Gar-
rison commander, was inexplicably passed over.
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was too heavily represented in China's governing structure,
Mao said that the solution to local problems lay with
the military and that the solution to the military's prob-
lems lay in its work.* He went on to make several remarks
-- addressed to all Central Committee members, expressly
including Politburo members -- about the need to work
carefully and avoid pride, and to proceed with particular
care in rebuilding the Party. These remarks were the
foundation of the subsequent campaign against "arrogance"
and "complacency," especially on the part of the military
administrators.
Mao in this speech associated himself with Lin's
call for "preparations against war" (both material and
spiritual preparations), a call which was also to become
a national campaign. Lin was later to be charged with
offenses under this heading.
In sum, Lin Piao seemed at the time to be in high
favor with Mao, to be in a very strong position in the
military structure, and to be moving toward a similarly
strong position in the Party. His position in both the
military and political structures, however, depended upon
his retention of Mao's favor, and Mao had already made
plain his concern about the responsiveness of the PLA
-- the PLA for which Lin was responsible. As things were
to turn out, Mao's attitude -- not Lin's position in the
structure of power -- was to be decisive.
*Mao had already symbolized his concern over ?ze PLA 's
role -- not the numbers of PLA men in key posts, but the
responsiveness of the PLA to the Party, meaning hlmself,
He had had inserted into the new Party Constitution a
provision that the PLA (among other components of the state
and society) "must ?,accept the leadership of the Party"
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II. Lin's Decline in Mao's 129aEsil12.6.9-70
It is apparent in retrospect that at some time in
the year following the Ninth Party Congress of April 1969
Mao changed his mind about Lin Piao as his successor. It
was probably in this period that Mao decided that Lin
could not be relied upon to make the PLA -- still the
governing apparatus -- reliably responsive to the civilian
Party leadership. Lin may have been unreliable in other
respects as well. For example, Lin's group may have
been unwilling to accept the Mao-Chou line that the USSR
had become the main enemy of China, In March 1970 Mao made
a proposal which seemed to Lin to reflect a loss of confid-
ence in him -- the proposal not to restore the post of
Chairman of the regime, Lin was right, because Mao soon
took other organizational steps against him -- removing
a Lin protege from command of the Peking Garrison, and
placing the General Political Department under the lead-
ership of non-proteges of Lin,
Mao took
yet another step against Lin by reorganizing t1 Peking
Military Region, again preventing Lin from installing his
own men in the leading posts.\
/ By the end of 1970, Mao had
apparentlystopped talking about Lin: he had probably,
by this time, decided not only to replace Lin as his
successor but to purge Lin and his closest proteges.
Some Issues: The principal developments of the
year following the Ninth Party Congress were Mao's in-
creasing concern about the responsiveness of the PLA to
the civilian Party leadership, the growing Soviet military
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threat to China and the Chinese response to that, the all-
out "investigation" of a mass organization (the "5/16"
group) as a symbol of "conspiracy" against Party leaders,
the related decline of the "radical"-led central Cultural
Revolution Group, and the related rise of Chou En-lai,
While the precise relationship among these interesting
developments is still not clear, there were so many pos-
sibJe ramifications of each of them that it is not hard
to believe that Lin got caught in some combination of
circumstances that made him appear to disadvantage,
Mao's admonitions to the PLA at the Ninth Party
Congress rose rapidly to the level of a campaign to en-
sure that the PLA work under "Party" leadership and work
much better than before, In the joint editorial on the
Party's 48th anniversary (1 July), it was insisted with
unusual shrillness that the Central Committee of the Party
was "the only center of leadership for the whole Party,
the whole army, and the people throughout the country,"
and, again, that the PLA must "accept the leadership of the
Party,,?carry out to the letter the line, principles and
policies of the Party's Central Committee personally
formulated by the great leader Chairman Mao," The joint
editorial on Army Day (1 August) emphasized that "much
work remains to be done," that this work must not be
"crude and careless," that "Chairman Mao's proletarian
line on army building" must be carried out in a "better
way," that this must be done "under the leadership of
the Party Central Committee with Chairman Mao as its
leader," and so on
The tone taken toward the PLA in the joint editorials
on the same occasions in 1.968 had been very different
The PLA wao then the great teacher of the Chinese people
and the most redoubtable foe of "class enemies." Indeed,
it was said, one's "attitude toward the PLA is the attitude
toward the dictatorship of the proletariat" (meaning, the
re-emerging Party and Mao himself)
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While this campaign was never -- at least in its
public manifestations -- of such intensity as to explain
in itself the purge of the PLA's central leadership in
September 1971, it seems likely that during 1969 the
problem of the responsiveness of the PLA -- of the PLA
for which Lin Piao was directly responsible -- came to be
seen by Mac as the problem of Lin's own personal respon-
siveness to Mao, In other words, a Lin Piao who could
not be relied upon in his principal area of concern could
not be relied upon over the full range of concern of a
successor to Mao. And there may well have been indica-
tions of Lin's unreliability in other areas of concern
than the PLA.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1969, the Rus-
sians were establishing a credible possibility of a large-
scale military attack on China. Lin himself in April 1969
had called on the nation to take the Soviet "tactical"
threat seriously. In May and June, Chinese spokesmen took
note that China was being threatened (as it indeed was)
by Soviet air attacks on its nuclear installations. In
August, the Soviets wiped out a Chinese unit which crossed
the border from Sinkiang. In early September, continuing
to threaten Peking, the Soviet C/S publicly suggested the
possibility of a Soviet operation against China's North-
east.
The principal Chinese leaders -- Mao, Lin, and
Chou -- responded in an apparently coordinated way. With
Mao's permission, Chou on 11 September met with Kosygin
and agreed to begin talks about the border, without insist-
ing on the earlier precondition that Moscow "recognize"
the inequitable nature of the old traaties. And Lin in
his annual National Day (1 October) speech was notably
milder toward the USSR than he had been in his Party Con-
gress speech, denouncing tM US enemy by name but failing
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to specify the source of "social-imperialism" (the USSR)
or to refer to the border situation (the immediate mili-
tary threat). The border talks soon got underway.*
Probably animated largely by Mao's hatred and fear
of the Russians, Peking followed with an initiative toward
the United States in December 1969, In response to the
US- withdrawal of naval patrols from the Taiwan Strait in
November, Peking in December stated for the first time
its willingness to receive the American representative in
the Chinese Embassy in Poland in order to resume the
Sino-American talks. In this double step forward, the
talks were resumed in January 1970.
Lin 'a relations with the Russians had always seemed
to run parallel with Mao's, Living in the USSR from 1938
to 1941, under treatment for wounds, Lin had got on well
with the Russians, but on returning to Yenan in 1942 he
had supported Mao in putting down the more pro-Soviet CCP
leaders. As the commander of Chinese Communist forces
in the Northeast (Manchuria) in 1945-48, he had ,again got
on well with the Russians, but he had apparently not
developed the special relationship with them which was
attributed to certain other Chinese leaders later purged,
From the late 1950s, with the Sino-Soviet split, Lin had
joined Mao in downgrading Soviet military doctrine and
practice. Throughout the 1960s, Lin in his public pro-
nouncements had denounced Soviet positions in the same
terms that Mao did, and in his unpublished talks had been
as scornful of the Russians -- professionally and per-
sonally -- as Mao could wish,
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There was, on the face of it, no good reason for
any Chinese military leader to oppose these moves to
reduce tension with both of China's principal enemies.
J It was in this period between April and December
1969 that the Party first formulated the line -- later to
be withdrawn, then restored -- that the USSR was China's
main enemy, replacing the US in that role,
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It had been presumed all along that some Chinese
military leaders had opposed the break with the USSR
-- with its consequent depressing effect on Chinese mili-
tary development and its imposition on the Chinese military
establishment of another major enemy -- although after the
purge of Peng Te-huai they would have kept quiet about
it. Even among those who had genuinely supported Mao in
the break, some Chinese military leaders -- men who had
been Communists all their adult lives -- could be expected
to be unable to regard the USSR as their main enemy and to
act on this belief. It is possible that ITE-Piao was
among their number, that certain of his proteges agreed
with him, that this group was simply unable to make the
shift, and that this became evident to Mao in Party meet-
ings or in private conversation.
As a related issue, there was the continuing "pre-
parations against war" campaign, After Lin's fall, he
and other military leaders were to be charged with having
used the campaign as a cover for preparations for a
military takeover. The campaign would of course have
permitted military leaders to strengthen their positions,
and they were to be expressly chaz.jed with having prepared
'iarious headquarters and bases for use in a "coup," This
will be touched on later.
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Another related issue, during the spring and sum-
mer of 1969, was a renewal of disruptive behavior by mass
organizations in China -- i.e. by their representatives
in, or seeking places in, "revolutionary committees" and
new Party committees throughout China. This misbehavior
disappointed the expressed hopes of Mao (and Lin) for
"unity" in the constructive stage of the Cultural Revolu-
tion- Peking's pronouncements showed a strong concern
over the problems of factionalism and "anarchism," and
related the latter to the threat qf a Soviet attack; as
Chou En-lai said, such "internal weakness" would encourage
Soviet aggression, Thus the PLA was again authorized to
use whatever degree of force was necessary to restore
order By December 1969,/
there began an all-out "investigation" of the infamous
5/16 Group, the most militant of all mass organizations,
the symbol of repudiated "ultraleft" positions of all
kinds, the symbol of "conspiracy" against Party leaders,
and the symbol of a recent grisly fact of Chinese life
-- political assassinations,*
4The 5/16 Group had unquestionably carried out assas-
sinations of rival leaders of mass organizations, and
may have made attempts even on Party leaders, One such
attempt may have been made in March 1970 -- on Hsieh Fu-
chih, the Minister of Public Security -- while the in-
vestigation of the 5/16 Group was underway, and this in
turn may have been an important factor
in the replacement of the Peking Garrison commander,
protege Wen Yu-cheng-1
Lin's
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It would not have been hard, in the winter of
1969-70, to make a case relating Lin Piao to the 5/16
Group, For one thing, Lin had been the source of incendiary
statements to mass organizations. Further, Lin had, on 25X1
the record, minimized the offenses of PLA members of the
5/16 Group, describing them as true "Leftists" who had
made mistakes.r
Thus the most that can be said is that the investigation
of the 5/16 Group in the winter of 1969-70 may have turned
up something damaging to Lin and certain of his military
proteges -- some evidence, say, of "double-dealing," of
conspiring against other Party leaders (e.g, Chou) with
the leaders of. the 5/16 Group -- which was made known to
Mao and which Mao kept to himself for later use, not
permitting it to be reflected in the Party documents of
1970.
The central Cultural Revolution Group (CRG), which
may have been inactive for some months in its role as
the Party's de facto secretariat, disappeared from view
in December 1969 and was never thereafter reported to be
acting in any capacity whatever. The civilian "radicals"
heading the CRG who were to fall into disgrace (Chen Po-
ta) or to become inactive (Kang Sheng) during 1970 were ap-
parently in decline during the winter of 1969-70, a decline
reflected in the abolition of their organizational base
of power, the CRG, Moreover, Chou En-lai was described
by Party leaders in 1970 as the Party's de facto secretary-
general -- replacing both Chen Po-ta and Kang Sheng in
that role -- and it seems reasonable to believe that
Chou began to play that role at about the time the central
CRG disappeared, i,e, in the early winter of 1969-70,
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Although Lin and Chou appeared at the time to have
resolved their earlier differences and to be playing
complementary roles, it seems possible in retrospect
-- with the benefit of more information on the activities
of both men -- that Lin began at that time to see Chou
as a threat to his own plans for dominating the Party
apparatus, If so, he may have attempted -- as some later
materials suggest -- to restrict Chou's authority in
the role of de facto secretary-general, or even to prevent
Chou from occupTETthe post at all, If so, this could
have brought Lin into serious conflict with Mao during
the winter, because-there is abundant evidence -- not
only in the reporting but in the entire course of Chinese
policy after the Ninth Party Congress -- that by this time
Chou was in the highest possible favor with Mao and was,
indeed, his principal advisor and favorite lieutenant,*
Mao's Crucial ProE2sal: Whatever the combination
of circumstances that brought Lin into disfavor with
Mao by or during the winter of 1969-70, in March 1970
Mao made a proposal which set in motion the train of
events culminating in the destruction of Lin and the
purge of his closest proteges in September 1971: This
proposal was not to restore, in the new State Constitution,
the post of Chairman of the regime -- a post parallel
to, although far less important than, Mao's own post of
Chairman of the Party, and which had been vacant since
*It is ironical that this one of Mao's Z1 utenants who
had been least predisposed to radical and militant courses
had risen to the position of Mao's most influential ad-
visor by the end of a militant Cultural Revolution designed
for radical ends- But Chou seems never to have put him-
self in the position of seeming disloyal to Mao, which
for Mao has always been the ultimate test
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the purge of Liu Shao-chi in 1966, The post itself had
been an empty one, in practice -- of symbolic importance
only, another "Chairman" to stand beside the one true
Chairman as his designated successor. Yet there is much
evidence /that Lin thought the post
important, and wanted at least to restore it -- even if
he were not to occupy it himself immediately.
Lin's willingness to stake so much on this ques-
tion of the Chairmanship is probably the hardest thing to
explain in developments of recent years, Lin's calcula-
tion as to the importance of the post itself must have
been based on two considerations. One was that the Chair-
man would be the principal officer of the government,
ranking Premier Chou En-lai. The other was that, at
least under the old Constitution, the Chairman was the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and was autonomous
in this role, not responsible to any other organ of
government. If it was Lin's belief that Mao at the time
was building up Chou En-lai and the government machinery
as a counter-weight to Lin and the PLA (much as he had
earlier built up Lin and the PLA against Liu Shao-chi
and the Party apparatus), it would have made some sense
for Lin to try to get the post of Chairman restored and,
sooner or later, to get control of it, This would have
given him superiority over Chew in all three hierarchies
-- Party, military, government -- and in particular (al-
though evidence is lacking that Liu Shao-chi in the post
ever so much as moved a platoon) would have given him
rather than Chou the right to name the Minister of Defense.
It did not make good sense -- in fact, it was a disastrous
mistake -- for Lin to make an iEsue of this post, because
Lin over the years had had abundant opportunity to
recognize the hazards of revealing personal ambition (as
distinct from accepting responsibilities thrust upon him).
But Lin apparently regarded Mao's attitude toward the
restoration of the post -- and its eventual occupancy
by Lin -- as a critical test of Mao's attitude toward
Lin as the successor, and (to judge from developments at
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the Party plenum later in 1970) soon reached the judgment
that he was ready to test his own strength against Mao's
will.
It is not known at what time Mao made the actual
decision not to restore the post-- but it was sometime
before the plenum of August-September 1970, when it was
revealed that he had made and reaffirmed this decision.
Mao and Lin were the two principal officers of the com-
mittee formed In July 1970 to write the new Cdnstitution,
and Mao may have made the decision -- and informed Lin
df it -- at that time.
The Second Plenum: It was apparently just prior
to the Party Plenum of August-September 1970 that Mao
made two changes in the central military leadership which
were damaging to Lin. He removed Lin's protege Wen Yu-
cheng (who last appeared on 1 June) from the critically
important post of commander of the Peking Garrison/
i Mao did not permit Lin to replace Wen with another
protege.* Moreover, Li Te-sheng, who was not a protege
The exact time of Wen's removal is not known, but
he had made frequent appearances before his last appear-
ance, so it is reasonable to believe that he was removed
soon after his last one, i.e,, that he was out before
late August. The new Peking Garrison commander was not
identified until September 1971, but none of the Garri-
son's officers in that intervening 15 months was a protege
of either Lin or Huang Yung-sheng.
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of Lin's but rather of the Nanking MR commander Hsu Shih-yu,
had been brought to Peking by August if not earlier to
take over the General Political Department, charged with
the indoctrination, investigation and evaluation of the
PLA and its officers. Of the two earlier-identified deputy
directors of this highly important Department, one was
an apparent protege of Lin's, the other was not.
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Lin's Status in Late 1970: However the question
of the Chairmanship was handled at the second plenum, and
whatever the handling of the miljeary leaders thereafter,
Lin knew beyond doubt by the end of 1970 that he had
declined in Mao's eyes. This knowledge was almost cer-
tainly reinforced by Lin's inability, at that time, to
replace the purged leaders of the Peking MR with his own
men. It was obvious at the time that Lin would want to
have his proteges in those key,posts just as in other
MR headquarters, and it was regarded 'as? an anomaly that
he did not.* Lin had now -- by the end of 1970 -- lost
out on four key posts in a row -- the Garrison, the GPD,
and the two MR posts.r
/It does seem
*As in the case of the Peking Garrison, the new lead-
ers or acting leaders wnre not identified (and have still
not been), but it is apparent from Party documents that
they were not proteges of Lin's-
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in retrospect that Mao, during the second half of 1970,
was taking important organizational steps in Peking to
prepare for a showdown with Lin and his proteges. When
the showdown came, in September 1971, the necessary
military forces -- immediately, the Garrison forces, and
ill reserve, the MR forces -- were in Mao's hands.
In Edgar Snow's interviews with Mao in thc; late
months of 197
there was a striking lack of re erence to
Lin in Mao's remarks. Although Lin had again made the
National Day (1 October) address in 1970 -- which
was to prove to be his last public speech -- and People's
Daily had begun at that time the practice of featuring
photographs of Mao and Lin together (rather than Mao alone),
Mao by late 1970 had apparently stopped talking about Lin
altogether, as his successor or anything else. Moreover,
Snow learned (apparently from Mao), and Chou confirme'.,
that Chou -- not Lin -- was "in charge" of rebuildiny
the Party. Moreover, even in talking with Snow about
their new policy toward the United States -- to explore
the possibilities for an improvement in relations at the
government-to-government level, while emphasizing initia-
tives which would mobilize the American people against
their government -- Mao and Chou did not associate Lin
as Mao's successor with this new line, as would have been
expected.
In these talks with Snow in late 1970, Mao showed
considerable sensitivity to China's appearance of being
dominated beneath his own level by the PLA. (Indeed,
this sensitivity seemed at the time to be a possible
explanation of Mao's failure to talk about Lill.) Mao
described the PLA's admittedly striking degree of power
as "temporary," and he defended the overall militari2ation
of Chinese society as necessary in view of the Soviet
military threat -- which had in fact seemed to be his
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reasoning at the time. (Chou En-lai took a similar line
with Snow on the role of the PLA, emphasizing the long-
standing principle of Party leadership.) Mao told Snow
that it would be wrong to judge his success in renewing
the leadership as a whole solely on the basis of observa-
tion of the national and provincial leaders (mainly PLA
figures), that the bulk of the new leadership produced
by the Cultural Revolution was to be found at the county
level, the "next generation" of Party leaders. Such
remarks were further indications that Mao was not satis-
fied with the responsiveness of the military administra-
tors, who were soon to be subjected to sharp public
criticism.
Snow did meet briefly with Lin and found him to
be feeble but relaxed and affable. Snow did not conclude
that Lin was in disfavor or thought himself to be, al-
though Snow was understandably much more impressed by
Chou and -- correctly, as it turned out -- thought Chou
to be playing the more important role of the two.-
/ More-
over, the regime's media continued to describe Lin as
"deputy leader," to present him as well as Mao as the
authority for the Party's policies, and to give him high
praise; pictures of Lin and Mao were displayed on important
occasions, and Mao-Lin badges were issued.*
In sum, it seems likely, in retrospect, that by
the end of 1970 Mao had decided not only to replace Lin
Piao as his successor but to purge Lin and his closest
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proteges. Thus Lin was right in believing -- as Party
briefings have presented him as believing -- that his
situation was desperate,*
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III. The Approach to the Crisis, 1971
It is credible, as alleged, that in or about Janu-
ary 1971 Lin Piao and his closest proteges began to plan
a "coup" against Mao, in the belief that they themselves
would otherwise be purged. It is also credible, as further
alleged, that the group's design from the start included a
plan to :all Mao if necessary. But it is not alleged
that Mao discovered any such plans that early.
In the early months of 1971, Mao was visibly con-
cerned -- still concerned, as he had been since 1969 --
with the problem of the reliability and responsiveness of
PLA figures as administrators, throughout China. There
seems to have been a small purge of the PLA -- not reaching
to the top levels -- at that time. During the spring
of 1971, Mao continued to approve the appointment of PLA
figures -- including proteges of Lin -- to key positions,
approval which must have reflected a calculation that in
the event of a Mao-Lin showdown he could split the great
majority of them off from Lin. However, the timing of
Mao's decisive move against Lin may have been moved up
/during the spring of 1971/
By June, Mao probably had an additional reason
to purge Lin's group -- its opposition to the Mao-Chou
foreign policy, specifically to the plan to receive
President Nixon, Mao may have begun, as early as June,
the talks with military-political leaders outside Peking
in which he successfully sought assurances of their sup-
port in a showdown with Lin's group. And he may have
taken additional steps against Lin's group in Peking it-
self -- mainly concerned with assuring his own control
of Peking -- in the early summer.
Some Criticism and a Small Purge:
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The new provincial-level Party committees began
to surface in December 1970, in the same pattern as the
earlier revolutionary committees and Party core groups
-- mostly dominated by military men, and almost all of
the most important of them (in provinces containing the
11 MR headquarters) headed by proteges of Lin Piao. Even
in retrospect, this is not startling, as these leaders
(for the most part) had been selected long before, and
had been approved by Mao and Chou. The practical problem
for Mao in this connection, assuming that he had already
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decided to purge Lin and his closest proteges at the center,
was how to prevent Lin from using the MR headquarters
against him,
By late February 1971 the regime's military adminis-
trators at all levels were coming under heavy fire -- e.g.
from Red Flag -- for "arrogance" and "complacency," and
Peking airected that all cadres of the Party apparatus
-- in which the military were most prominent -- undergo
"open-door rectification" of these shortcomings, The
Military Regions -- apparently beginning with the Shenyang
MR -- began at this time to hold "political and ideological
work" meetings concerned expressly with these problems.
The proceedings of one such (later) meeting show it to
have concluded that many PLA men in the structure of power
-- including secretaries of local (non-PLA) Party com-
mittees -- were unxeasonable and imperious, suppressed
their critics, acted in opposition to Party policies,
and even committed crimes. PLA leaders had all too often
acted independently of local Party committees, had
made decisions within the PLA's own Party committees
and had imposed them on the local Party committees, had
forced the local Party committees to seek PLA approval
of their actions, and so on. PLA organs and personnel
were henceforth to accept their subordination to local
Party committees, or, if the local Party committee were
headed -- as, at the provincial level, most were -- by
men who were active PLA leaders concurrently, the civilian
members were to be given larger roles.
A small purge of the PLA seems to have been set in
motion in the early months of 1971. It did not reach as
high as the ranking figures of the MAC and General Staff
(positions held concurrently by the Politburo-level lead-
ers who were to be purged in September), but many illus-
trious faces were missing in the early months of 1971
or made their last appearance on or about May Day, and
some of them were probably purged before summer 1971.
The missing included (and still include) the director of
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the Operations Department of the General Staff, two
deputy directors of the General Logistics Department,
many national and regional leaders of the Air Force (the
service arm apparently hardest hit), some Navy figures,
some of the leaders of the Artillery and Armored forces,
and some of the leaders of less important arms such 'As
Engineers and Railway Engineers and Signals.*
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Lin's "Bases": As previovaly noted, Mao probably
concluded in the year following the Ninth Party Congress
that Lin could not be relied upon to make the PLA properly
responsive to Mao and other civilian Party leadership,
had apparently begun to take organizational steps against
Lin in Peking no later than the summer of 1970, and by the
end of 1970 had probably marked Lin for purging. It is
a striking fact that the appointments of military leaders
continued in the early months of 1971, after this progres-
sion in Mao's thinking, and in a period in which Mao was
visibly concerned about the problem of the responsiveness
of the PLA. These appointments were striking both at the
national level -- in the central Party apparatus and the
central government machinery -- and at the provincial
level, that is in the new provincial-level Party committees.
*There was a curious development affecting the Air Force.
Deliveries of military aircraft to operating forces sharply
declined, from early 1971, while production increased,
causing an unprecedented backlog of undelivered aircraft.
One possible explanation is a belief that the Air Force
was not to be trusted with these new aircraft, although
it is not at all clear what use it was feared that these
aircraft would be put to.
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IJin'o principal
otfense was that of attempting to install as many of his
proteges as possible in key posts in the military establish-
ment and in the developing Party and governmental appara-
tus. it was an offense in which Lin appeared at
least until June to have the collaboration of Mao and
Chou, the latter making and the former approving such
appointments.
There is no entirely satisfactory explanation of
these appointments. While it is true that failure to
confirm in their posts men who had been selected long
before would have given Lin's group warning that Mao
intended to move against the group, Lin had already been
given sufficient warning to lead him to conclude by the
end of 1970 that he was marked for purging. The only
credible explanation of these continuing appointments of
Lin's proteges thus seems to be a calculation by Mao
that, in the event of a Mao-Lin showdown, the great
majority of Lin's proteges would side with Mao rather
than with Lin. If so, this calculation was to prove
correct, in the summer of 1971.
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In any case, Mao's concern about "bases".-- whether
political or military -- that might be used against him
was to be reflected in the 1 July joint editorial on
the 50th anniversary of the Party's founding. The edi-
torial inter alia denounced early leaders of the Party
who in their "organizational line.,,practiced sectarianism
and deprived Chairman Mao of his power," foresaw a "pro-
tracted struggle" to consolidate the "dictatorship of the
proletariat politically, ideologically,.., and organiza-
tionally," and emphasized the need to "uphold democratic
centralism" -- that is, to recognize the supreme authority
of the Party center, to be obedient to higher levels, as
opposed to the concept of "many centers, i.e, no center."
This editorial reaffirmed Mao's precept that "the Party
commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to
command the Party."*
The sssue was pretty clearly not the existence of so
many military leaders in key positions, as they continued
to be assigned to them after the time that Mao had deciZed
(footnote continued on page 35)
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"Debates" on Foreign Policy: The media's highly
favorable treatment of Lin Piao -- giving him the beginn-
ings of a "personality cult" -- continued through spring
1971. Lin arrived and departed with Mao on the occasion
of May Day, looking terrible (huddled in a greatcoat,
while other Party leaders wore no coats), but otherwise
giving every appearance of being, as billed, Mao's closest
comrade and successor- At least through May, Chou En-lai
was presenting himself as acting in general on the "in-
structions" of Lin.as well as Mao-
By the end of May, however, Chinese Communist lead-
ers had almost certainly had some of the "debates" about
foreign policy which Peking's spokesmen (including Chou
En-lai) subsequently admitted having had -- in particular,
about the new stance toward the United States, as the time
was rapidly approaching to make the actual arrangements
for President Nixon's visit.* It was suggested above
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(footnote continued from page 34)
to purge Lin and even after he had begun his talks with
military-political leaders outside Peking in which he made
his intentions cZear, When the final four provincial-level
Party committees were announced in August 1971, the mili-
tary's visibility was at its height Of the 29 such com-
mittees; 20 of the first secretaries were career military
men (12 commanders, eight political officers), all of
whom apparently retained their military posts; only seven
were old Party cadres, two were men with police backgrounds,
and none was a representative of a mass organization. In
most of the provincial committees headed by old Party
cadres, the next two ranking secretaries were career 25X1
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that Lin and his proteges may have been among those who,
in 1969, had been unable to make the shift that fixed
the USSR as China's main enemy, and that Mao may have
seen this. If so, therl position had perhaps looked
better for a time in spring 1970, when the US incursion
into Cambodia provoked Mao to a thunderous denunciation
(20 May) restoring the United States to its long-standing
position as the main enemy. But, as previously noted,
by late 1970 the USSR had again been fixed as the main
enemy, and Mao and Chou, in telling Edgar Snow about
their intention to explore the possibilities for an im-
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government-to-government level, did not associate Lin
with this initiative.
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The 1 July 1971 joint editorial previously cited
made clear that Mao and Chou still felt it necessary to
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defend their new line with their biggest gun, as if the
"debate" had persisted to the time of writing and was
about to be declared at an end. It was emphasized that
Mao himself stood behind the new line toward the United
States. Whereas Liu Shao-chi's line had been "capitula-
tionist," Mao's policy of negotiations (the argument went)
was very different. As Mao had long ago said,
How to give 'tit for tat' depends
on the situation?, If they wanted to
negotiate, sometimes not going to
negotiations was tit for tat, and
sometimes going to negotiations was
also tit for tat,
The editorial reminded its readers that Mao "went to
Chungking [in 1945] in person for negotiations? -- which,
admittedly, had failed, but had "exposed" the enemy for
all to see, It was evident that Mao and Chou in 1971 had
high hopes for something more than "exposing" the enemy:
they saw a good chance for positive gains, and were angry
with those who were unwilling to make the shift and/or
to accept the small degree of risk, This editorial went
on to denounce "hidden traitors who have illicit rela-
tions with foreign countries," another matter entirely.
On the assumption that the Party is telling the
truth in its charge that Lin opposed the Mao-Chou line,
it is not hard to believe that some of his close proteges
supported him in Party meetings, For them as for Lin,
there were obvious grounds to stand on -- either of
basic affinities with the USSR, so that Moscow by definition
could not be the main enemy, or of prudence in the face
of the Soviet threat, so that the dangerous Russians should
be placated, rather than antagonized by conciliatory
gestures toward the distant and -- on the record of recent
years -- less dangerous United States,
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Some Possible Moves A ainst Lin: Lin Piao made
what was to prove is Iastublic appearance on 3 June.
On 7 June, Hsu Shih-yu, commander of the Nanking Military
Region, made what was to be his last publi.: appearance for
almost eight months. The reasons for Hsu's disappearance
were most uncertain. He had appeared to be a favorite
of both Mao and Lin Piao (himself still in Mao's apparent
favor), and in a very strong position-*
*Hsu had begun his association with Lin in the 1930s,
and stayed with him through World War II. From the mid-
40s, he was a leading figure in the East China area, no
longer connected with Lin. However, when Lin became Min-
ister o: Defense in 1959, he appointed Hsu as one of his
deputiee, with Hsu remaining in the Nanking MR. Hsu was
one of the few military leaders to whom Lin confided his
plans for purging the PLA in 1966 Hsu thus appeared to
qualify as a protege of Lin's, if not as close a protege
as some of the military leaders in Peking and Canton
Mao entered Hsu's life in a critical way in early 1967,
when Hsu was under attack by mass organizations and ambi-
tious military subordinates in his MR: Mao took Hsu with
him to Shanghai, and then to Peking for several months,
while the threat to Hsu was being dealt with. Again in
1968 Hsu was defended against attack, this time by Kang
Sheng'speaking expressly in Mao's name
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The reasons are still uncertain. If Mao were fully
confident of Hsu, and had information to the effect that
Lin's group was plotting against him in East China, it
might seem reasonable to keep Hsu in Nanking. Thus Hsu
may have been brought to Peking under suspicion, for
examination and evaluation, and held there for many months
before being returned to Nanking early in 1972 with all
of his military and political titles and apparently in
high favor. But it is also possible that Hsu was the
first of the military-political leaders outside Peking to
be consulted by Mao on his plans for purging Lin and
others, and that Hsu was brought to Peking to assume a
key military position in Peking itself -- e.g. acting
commander of the Peking MR -- in this time of troubles,
and in anticipation of a period of crisis. Hsu's prin-
cipal deputy in the Nanking MR was brought to Peking at
about the same time as a deputy C/S, and other proteges
of Hsu were soon named to other key posts in Peking and
in some of thu MR headquarters,*
*Mao's arrangements for assuring the reliability of
the Peking MR can only be conjectured- After the purge
of the MR commander and first political officer in late
19703 Peking simply refused to identify those acting in
those capacities. Li Te-sheng, the prot,ege of Hsu Shih-
yu who appeared in August 1970 as Director of the
General Political Department, was much later reported
to be acting as the Peking MR commander concurrently; he
may have assumed the post in summer 1970. Chi Teng-kuei,
a young Party leader in Honan and an apparent protege
of Mao himself, who (like Li) had been named an alternate
member of the Politburo in 1969, was apparently brought
to Peking in 1970 and was later reported to be the first
political officer of the Peking MR; if so, he too may have
assumed this post as early as summer 1970L
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Another important step that might have been taken
at about the same time was the strengthening, for Mao's
purposes, of the Peking Garrison. While the Garrison
had been reorganized in. 1970, its commander and first
political officer had not been identified. Wu Chung, not
a protege of any member of Lin's group, is known to have
been the Garrison commander by September 1971, and had
apparently held this post for some months before September.
Similarly, Wu Te, an old Party cadre with a police back-
ground who was acting head of the Party's Peking committee
in the absence of the disabled Hsieh Fu-chih, was making
appearances suggesting that he was concurrently the first
political officer of the Peking Garrison (a pattern also
observed in Shanghai, where Mao's man Chang Chun-chiao
had held both posts for some time).
Two visible developments in early July suggested
the possibility that Mao was preparing the Party for some
change in Lin Piao's status. The 1 July joint editorial
cited above did praise Lin by name as both a compiler
and an exegete of Mao's thought, specifying under the
latter heading Lin's report to the Ninth Party Congress
in spring 1969. The editorial also called for Party
rebuilding to continue under Lin as "deputy leader" as
well as Mao as leader. It did not, however, discuss the
matters taken up in Lin's report, and it did not specify
any recent contributions made by Lin, and thus carried
at least a faint implication -- noted by some observers
at the time -- that Lin's current role was less important
than his past roles.*
Moreover, during Dr. Kissinger's visit to Peking
in the second week of July (9-11 July), the old Marshal
Yeh Chien-ying met the U.S. delegation and was the Chinese
military representative (there was no American opposite
*In retrospect, one passage takes ,:ad aim at Lin's
group: "It is essential thoroughly to expose the...
conspirators, careerists, renegades and enemy agents,..
and the hidden traitors who have illicit relations with
foreign countries..."
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number) throughout the talks between Dr. Kissinger and
Chou En-lai. Despite his lack of a government post (which
Lin did have, as Minister of Defense), Yeh acted as the
chief of the delegation when Chou was otherwise engaged,
and the Chinese in conversation emphasized the overall
importance of Yeh. Yeh's role in the talks could reason-
ably be interpreted in terms of his far greater experience
(than Lin) in dealing with Americans and in terms of Lin's
illness (he was soon reported ill again).* But Mao may
have been thinking ahead, to the time when Yeh would surface
as his principal military aide, a role which Yeh was to
assume fully in September. The civilian Party leaders
apparently feared that Yeh's eminence would be taken by the
Chinese audience as meaning a concomitant and radical
decline in Lin's status, because Peking did not reveal to
that audience Yeh's role in the talks. There had indeed
been such a decline in Lin's status, but Mao and his
lieutenants still in favor -- e.g., Chou, Yeh -- did not
want that to be generally known until they had made the
necessary arrangements to deal with its consequences.
Some of these arrangements -- those that could be
made in Peking -- have been discussed above. Others had
to be made outside Peking. Among the most important of
these were talks with MR leaders, other than whatever
talks with leaders of the Peking MR and Nanking MR that
Mao had had before July.
*Lin's wife, Yeh Chun, made her last public appearance
on 11 July, not in connection with Dr. Kissinger's visit
(which was of course not publicized at all at the time).
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There may conceivably have been a prolonged meet-
ing of the MAC -- in Mao's absence -- in late July. Al-
most every important military leader in Peking was out
of sight in the last week of July, and most were missing
for the last two weeks. It is further conceivable that
such a meeting -- in the absence also of Lin Piao, who
was reported seriously ill in early August -- acted to
replace Lin with Yeh Chien-ying as the de facto leader
of the MAC. All this seems doubtful, however, as no MAC
meeting at this time has been reported in the voluminous
Party briefings, and these briefings indicate that Mao
was not yet prepared to move decisively against Lin -- that
is, that he was still engaged in talks with military-political
leaders outside Peking as late as early September.
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IV. The Crisis, August - September 1971
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Mao's Talks with Regional Leaders: The decline in
Lin Piao's status -- which seemed at the time well short
of disgrace -- was reflected on Army Day, 1 August. With
Lin himself missing since 3 June and his wife since 11
July, the joint editorial for Army Day for the first time
in years included no quotation from Lin, and his wife failed
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to represent him at the Army Day reception.* Officially,
Lin was "too sick" to make appearances, and he may really
have been sick, even incapacitated, as was later reported.
This may help to explain Mao's apparent unconcern about
what Gin might be doing, in the way of carrying out a
coup or making preparations for one, in Mao's absence.
The PartS7's story, however, is that Lin was well enough
at least to attempt to activate an assassination plan and
to make contingent preparations to flee.
As previously suggested, Mao by the end of June
may have taken further steps to place the Peking Garrison
and the Peking MR under the command of officers loyal to
himself and had talked with at least some of the leaders
of the Nanking MR, may have talked with other regional
leaders in July or early August, and may have stopped at
the Wuhan MR headquarters in Central China on his
way south in August, although such talks cannot be documented.
In any case, Party briefings -- so widely disseminated
that refugees and travellers have supplied details of
them to the non-Communist press -- place Mao at a
point in the South China area (probably Changsha) 'in or
about mid-August (when Mao and the regional leaders con-
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*This editorial called for the Party's "absolute" lead-
ership of the PLA and fol the PLA's direct "responsibility"
to the "lea,ling organs of the Party" -- pretty clearly
meaning something more than the Lin-dominated MAC,
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The Aborted "Assassination" and "Coup": The Party's
official story asserts that Lin's group -- in this brief
remaining period of Lin's freedom -- atbmpted in early
September to activate a plan to assassinate Mao, an assas-
sination which was to be followed by a "coup" or military
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takeover,* However, the briefings vary considerably on
the matter of the assassination plans: the means to be
employed, the parties involved, the places, the dates,
the number of times that the plotters attempted to activate
their plans (one, three or five), and the means by which
these plans were frustrated (by a repentant conspirator,
or the hired assassin himself, or Lin's daughter, or what-
ever). The most common version is that Lin and his
proteges did commission at least one attempt on Mao in
Shanghai or some other point in East China in early
September, and were frustrated by some combination of
poor planning, faulty execution, and bad luck.** Almost
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*Lin Psao ITTFT37tf had spoken at great length (when he
was in favor) of the danger of a "coup," perhaps involv-
ing assassinations. A possible attempt on Hsieh Pu-chili
in March 1970 has been noted. Later in 1970, Chen Po-ta
was charged with plotting the assassination of Madame Mao.
Li Tien-yu, whose death after illness was announced in
September 1970, may have been assassinated. In December
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leader in Yunnan, was reported to be an assassination
(which the local press appeared to confirm) ?r
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all accounts agree that the attempt was aborted -- that
is, no bullet was fired, no bomb set off. Lin's group
simply tried to arrange for this to be done, and were
unable to get it carried through.
The alleged attempt to activate the plan is con-
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sistent with other parts of the story. (
There are three difficulties in accepting the Party's
story of an attempt to carry out an assassinatic,1 plan.
One is that the Party has seemed to tell too many differ-
ent stories about it, as if trying and discarding various
versions until it found one that was credible. For another,
one would suppose that the commissioners of an assassination
would attempt to conceal their identification with it,
whereas all versions of the alleged attempt trace it easily
to Lin's group, even to documents written by Lin's gloup.
For another, it is hard to understand why a Chairman Mao
who had discovered, prior to 12 September -- as most
accounts of Party briefings have it -- that Lin and others
had already attempted to have him killed, would have al-
lowed Lin to remain free and his Trident to remain avail-
able to him, and would not have ordered the seizure of
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others in Peking. It would seem that nothing more than
a telephone call would have been needed to immobilize
both Lin and the plane at Peitaiho, whereas the air stand-
down apparently cid not begin until the morning hours of
13 September, after the flight from Peitaiho.* And Lin's
proteges in Peking were not immediately arrested. More-
over, the flight itself apparently came as a shock to Mao,
as it should not have been if those with access to the
plane were failed assassins.
None of these difficulties seems insurmountable.
There may be a single official version, garbled by its
many voices and audiences. The commissioners of the assas-
sination may indeed have tried to conceal their connection
with the plan, but were betrayed by a single one of their
group or its agents (as several accounts say). Mao may
have felt that Lin was impotent in Peitaiho, may have
ordered the air standdown earlier than the time it became
apparent (and Lin evaded it, as some accounts suggest),
anci may have felt that Lin's proteges in Peking were al-
ready neutralized by his own men.
As previously suggested, the existence of an as-
sassination plan -- a plan to kill Mao if necessary --
is entirely credible. But the question of whether the
conspirators tried to activate their plan while Mao was
in Shanghai in early September has to remain open.
it is conceivable that Mao deliberately permitted Lin
to flee, in order to make the overall case against him
more credible. This is very doubtful, however, in view
of Lin's potential value to the USSR, if only as a source
of information on Chinese affairs (cf. the Party's charge
that Lin on his.; flight was bearing China's national
defense plans and other sensitive materials).
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Additional information on Lin's plans may have
come to Mao from a variety of sources: from the regional
leaders with whom Mao had leen talking, in particular
from Chang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-yuan in Shanghai (both
Politburo members who shuttled between Peking and Shanghai),
from Chou En-lai or Yeh Chien-ying or Madame Mao in Peking,
or even from Lin's daughter (as some accounts assert, al-
though it is hard to believe that Lin would have taken
his daughter, who could play no useful role, into his
confidence; and most versions assert more credibly that
Lin's daughter informed other Party leaders only of Lin's
plans to flee).
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Ironically, on 11 September",, People's
Daily was prominently advertising the forthcoming pub-
lication of "50 historic photographs" of Mao and Lin
-- mostly of Mao, but several of Lin -- as if Lin were
still in the highest favor. While it is possible that
one of Lin's supporters in Peking was responsible for
this initiative, the supervisor if not director of propa-
ganda was Mao's man 7ao Wen-yuan, and it seems more likely
that this advertisement was a part of the deception
campaign which was soon to become systematic.
Mao's Return to Peking: Accounts agree that Mao
returned to Peking, probably by car or train, on 12 September,
at least a day earlier than originally planned. Mao is
said to have arrived in Peking at about 1600. A Party
meeting -- perhaps largely of military leaders -- was
convened that same evening, either by Mao or by Chou En-
lai acting in Mao's name. There is independent confirma-
tion, by foreign observers in Peking, of such a meeting
at that time.
Mao's hand was forced, to a degree, by the forth-
coming meeting of the National People's Congress, scheduled
to open on 20 September. He had decided -- on whatever
grounds -- to purge Lin and his proteges, so he could
not allow the NPC to reconfirm Lin as his successor or
to fill either of the key government posts -- Chairman of
the NPC or Premier -- with one of Lin's men. But Mao
had a week to take care of this, and the 12 September
meeting held immediately on his return has to be explained
on other grounds.
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The urgency of the Party meeting of 12 September
can be explained either in terms of Mao's belief that he
had narrowly escaped assassination or of his belief that
Lin was planning a cou ainst him ( robably entailing
assassination).
In
connection with this Party meeting, it seems virtually
certain that Mao ordered into action, to protect himself
and other Party leaders, that unit of the Peking Garrison
charged with the physical protection of Central Committee
members, and that he cut Lin's military proteges in Peking
off from command of their forces, taking direct command
as Chairman of the MAC and sending his orders through
Chou En-lai and Yeh Chien-ying,
Mao's intention to purge Lin and others, together
with his reasons for doing so, was almost certainly made
clear -- whether by himself or by Chou -- at this meeting.
His intention to prolong the meeting in order to deter-
mine the extent of Lin's support was probably made clear
also.
Lin's Flight and Death: Most accounts suggest that
Lin, who had known since early September that Mao regarded
Lin as plotting against him and that Mao planned to purge
him, had made his own plans to flee if necessary. In most
accounts /which
include allegations of attempts to arrange Mao's assassina-
tion, Lin's plans were contingent on the fortunes of his
plans to kill Mao. These accounts suggest that Lin, know-
ing sometime before 12 September that his "coup" had already
failed and knowing that his implication in recent moves
against Mao was known to Mao or fearing that it would
become known, activated his escape plan, fixing his flight
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for 0700 on 13 September -- prior to the time at which
Mao was originally scheduled to return. Several accounts
agree that Mao's return to Peking earlier than expected
-- whether 'as the survivor of an assassination plan or
as the Party's leader intending to purge Lin for other
reasons -- caused Lin to hastily revise his plan, updating
the flight for the night of 12-13 September. Such a
revision may have been speeded as well by information
reaching Lin about the Party meeting and related events
on 12 September.* It does seem that the flight of the
Trident on the night of 12-13 September was hastily
organized and poorly prepared.
It cannot be proved that Lin Piao and his wife
and son were among the nine persons killed in the Trident
which crashed and burned at about 0300 on 13 September
near Khentai in Outer Mongolia, close to the Soviet border
and on a line with the big air complex at Irkutsk (the
apparent destination).
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The Disposition of Lin's Proteges: An almost-
complete air standdown was apparently imposed in the
early hours of 13 September -- surely on Mao's order --
in order to prevent any further such flights and to keep
all remaining military leaders in place while the Party
meeting continued and things were sorted out.r
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The Party meeting which had been convened on 12
September continued intensively. No Party leaders,
whether military or civilian, made any appearance at all
in the period 13-15 September. And the meeting remained
in session until the fate of Lin's principal proteges
had been decided. There is no evidence that the regional
military leaders as a group attended this meeting; and
indeed there is evidence -- the absence of flights --
that most of them did not attend, although some of the
principal leaders of the Peking and Nanking MRs were al-
ready in Peking.
Mao apparently adhered to the Chen Po-ta format in
dealing with Huang, Wu, and Li -- and with a fourth Lin
protege, Chiu Hui-tso, who remained free until 24 September.
That is, Mao allowed a mountain of charges to accumulate
against them, building the case deliberately.
After the first four days of this meeting Party
leaders began to come back into view.
On 19 September, the regime
postponed the NPC (scheduled to open the next day), and
at the same time cancelled the plans (if ever genuine)
for a traditional National Day celebration. By 20
September, Chou En-lai, Madame Mao and others were giving
banquets again, and the Madame -- who had seemed to have
an adversary relationship with most if not all of the
purged military leaders -- was observed to be in unusu-
ally high spirits. The four above-named proteges of Lin
were all officially charged and removed from their posts
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on 24 or 25 September,
dates consistent with the citations of Huang at the
regional level as a person still nominally in authority
as lat?. as 23-24 September, with Chiu's last public ap-
pearance on 24 September, and with Party briefings to
the effect that the conspirators had been rolled up by
25 September. Although the Party insists that these
four -- Huang t Wu, Li, Chiu -- were implicated in Lin's
plan to kill Mao (as well as the overall planning for a
"coup"), there have been no reports of their execution.*
Yeh Chien-ying, the senior active vice-chairman
of the MAC, was reportedly named on 25 September to direct
the MAC (still under Mao's chairmanship) and to act as
Minister of National Defense, replacing Lin Piao in both
roles. The crisis was over.
The Roles of Others: As previously noted, some
observers believe that Mao did not take the initiative
in the destruction of Lin and the purge of Lin's proteges
in September, an.1 that this course was forced upon Mao
by other leaders. But all accounts of the crisis
0:ve Mao the central role, from the start,
in purging the military leaders, and it is believed that
this billing can be accepted.
However, these same official accounts do give
credit to other leaders in assisting Mao in the crisis.
The best of them give credit in particular to Chou En-lai
*If they are not eventually executed, after the Party
has wrung the last drop of information from them, it
would seem that the Party does not fully believe its own
story -- in other words, does not believe that they were
among those planning to kill Mao. It seems most improbable
that even Mao would think to "rehabilitate" an assassin,
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and Yeh Chien-ying -- a version of events which tends
to be confirmed by Chou's dislodgement of Lin as the
second-ranking Party leader and by Yeh's rise to fourth
place (behind Madame Mao, and replacing Huang) in the
hierarchy publicized after the purge. Chou's great
prestige and popularity and his and Yeh's good relations
with most of China's military leaders must have proved
very useful to Mao throughout the course of the Party
meeting of 12-25 September and in preventing any important
challenge to the purge from developing either in Peking
or outside it. r
There is the additional question of whether any
of those leaders -- or others -- contributed to the
purge of the military leaders by feeding Mao false or
slanted information on their activities before Mao set
out on his summer tour or during the tour -- especially
in Shanghai, his last stop before returning to carry out
the purge.'
It is not hard to believe that some Party leaders close
to Mao -- e.g. Madame Mao, in effect a rival for Mao's
affections -- would have done what they could to encourage
Mao's suspicions of Lin. The record also indicates that
Chou En-lai, the most influential of Mao's lieutenants
since 1969, was in conflict with Lin in some respects since
1966 and in particular with regard to foreign policy.
Similar cases could be made for other Party leaders. The
record suggests, however, that Mao did not neld any help
in changing his mind about Lin: that Lin compromised
hirself before 1970 on at least the matter of the PLA's
(and his own) responsiveness and probably on other matters,
that he damaged himself seriously in 1970 by challenging
Mao on the issue of the chairmanship of the regime, and
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that he was marked for purging even prior to his opposi-
tion to the Mao-Chou foreign policy and various other
misconduct, whether or not one accepts the Party's story
about Lin's plans for a "coup".
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V. The Post-Lin Lire and Leadership
The handling of the intensely embarrassing case
of Lin Piao and his proteges, for both domestic and foreign
audiences, has been a hard problem for Party leaders.
The Party at first attempted to conceal the fall of Lin's
group. Party briefings on the case did not begin until
October. Public commentaries on the case have been in
terms of "swindlers like Liu Shao-chi," emphasizing con-
spiracy and illicit organizational activity, but more
recently blaming Lin's group for specific policies. [
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The PLA is being returned to a more nearly tradi-
tional role, and is being told that an obedient and humble
PLA need not fear a large-scale purge. A fairly substantial
purge of the PLA has already been carried out, but thus
far on a smaller scale than might have been expected.
Mao seems to remain the dominant figure, but is heavily
dependent on Chou En-la., whose status and authority have
been greatly enhanced. Mao and Chou are operating with
a relatively small central team, composed largely of their
own proteges.
The Public Line: Lin Piao was a "deputy leader"
in People's Daily as late as 16 September -- three days
after his death -- and appeared in a provincial broadcast
on 8 October. Neither Lin nor any member of his group has
been mentioned by the media since then. Chinese officials
have not admitted that Lin
is dead (merely "politically eliminated"), and there has
been only a very selective media discussion of his crimes
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(e.g. no mention or even implication that he is charged
inter alia with planning the assassination of Chairman
Mao). Just as in the case of Liu Shao-chi, who for a pro-
longed period after his fall was nut denounced by name,
Lin's group is discussed in terms of "swindlers like
Liu Shao-chi."
The commentaries have of course emphasized the
principle of Party leadership, as opposed to plotting,
double-dealing, splitting, and so on. The favorite quota-
tion is Mao's "Practice Marxism, and not revisionism;
unite, and don't split; be open and above-board, and
don't intrigue anu conspire." Many commentaries have
denounced those who "put sectarianism into action organi-
zationally,... establish their own mountain strongholds,
... form their own groups of diehard followers," and so
on.
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Recently, the media have been attributing to Lin's
group -- by strong implication -- a range of repudiated
political, economic and military policies. These policies
have been both to the Left and to the Right of Mao the
moving Center, and in general it is not possible on present
evidence to identify Lin's group -- as distinct from Mao
and other leaders -- with them.
While Peking has been insisting on the principle
of the Party's "absolute leadership" and upon the need
for a center and for obedience to that center (inter alia
denouncing the purged military leaders for their alleged
principle of "many centers"), there has continued to be
public and private talk about "collective leadership" with-
in Party organs at all levels. This is applicable to all
Party cadres, but seems aimed in particular at military
administrators, high-handed ("arrogant") in the past.
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/ Mao remains above the
Party, "collective" leadership begins below his level.
But where the Party begins, "collective" leadership is
supposed to begin, and many articles and broadcasts have
spelled out its operation at lower levels.
Within Party committees, the importance of the
first secretary is to be reduced. (This is to be true of
PLA Party committees as well.) The importance of civilian
cadres vis-a-vis the military is to be enhanced, just as
local Party committees are to have more authority vis-a-vis
military Party committees. The majority's will is to be
respected. And so on.
All this is to be "voluntary." The first secretary
is voluntarily to reduce his authority. If he is a
military man, he is voluntarily to give larger roles to
the civilians. And while he must if necessary promote
"correct minority views" (those in accord with national
policies), he must not force them on the other Committee
members.* The thought appears to be: everyone will
"voluntarily" comply with the Party center's orders, be-
cause he knows that he will be purged if he does not.
Party Briefings: Party cadres were told in Septem-
ber, and in some places well into October, that Lin and
*He has no guidance as to how to proceed if the in-
correct majority refuses to accept the "correct" posi-
tion. He is trapped between the two imperatives of
obedience to the center and submission to majority will.
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other missing military leaders were urgently engaged in
"war preparations" against the Soviet threat. Official
briefings apparently began at the provincial level in
early October. In some of them, Peking apologized for
having misinformed its own cadres in earlier briefings,
in effect admitting that it had not known hew to handle
the case.*
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indeed undermine the status and confidence of Party cadres
for years to come, he did indeed incite the Red Guards
and then turn on them, and he did indeed take steps to
reduce the prestige and authority of the PLA after the
1970 plenum. His policy has indeed been to keep the Chinese
people poor and virtuous, exploiting them to the utmost
to build the state. And his "revolutionary" diplomacy
during the Cultural Revolution did indeed isolate and
damage Peking. These are all charges that have been made
against Mao before, charges which Chinese leaders and
intellectuals have been purged for making, and which
important elements of Chinese society probably -- as
reported -- continue to believe.
The effect of the Party's circulation of this
document -- excerpts from which are appearing in the
public media -- is to associate Lin with a number of
popular grievances, as Party leaders are surely aware.
/ While there are probably still some
active leaders of the CCP who are happy to see this case
made against Mao (and Chou is conceivably among them),
the evidence is good that Mao himself took the initiative
in circulating the document, on the rationale of "learn-
ing from negative examples."
This is a practice peculiar to Mao, among Communist
leaders. He did it in 1956-57, in the "hundred flowers"
venture, when Chinese intellectuals criticized his "per-
sonality cult" and his persecution of them. He did it
again in 1959, circulating criticisms of his "leap forward"
venture made by the purged Defense Minister Peng Te-huai.
He did it again in 1963, when Khrushchev's attacks on his
policies were published in People's Daily and Red Flag.
It is a form of ad hominem argument: the men E-Jking the
criticisms are evil men, therefore the criticisms are
invalid, and are discredited with the evil men. In the
present case, criticism of Mao is attributed to the worst
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of all Chinese "traitors," the only one of them charged
to this time with having led a group of Party leaders
which planned to kill the demigod Chairman Hao.*)
Party media have cently denounced positions at-
tributed to Lin's group One recent
broadcast, for example, denounces those who will not
persist in "class struggle," who have "maliciously slandered
the dictatorship of the proletariat as 'dictatorship'
and 'tyranny,'" who want to "liberate all reactionaries,"
who envis-ge a "fascist dictatorship," who are "peddling
so-called 'genuine socialism,'" who want to "surrender to
social-imperialism" (the USSR), who argue that "'when the
people are rich, the country will be strong,'" and so on.
There is a question as to whether all this will
truly strengthen Mao's position. The case against him,
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is a good one. While no mainland Chinese
in his right mind could be expected to say publicly that
he agrees with the case, private agreement seems likely
to be reinforced by the consideration that Mao's own
chosen successor took this view of him. Certain discredited
leaders like Liu Shao-chi, and other active leaders such
as Chou En-lai, would seem bound to look better by com-
parison.
*The charges against Chen Po-ta fall short o this:
that Chen supported the "5/16" Group fl
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The Purge Since September: The PLA has been told
repeatedly that it is to be subordinated to the civilian
Party leadership, that opposition to Party policies
(including foreign policy) will not be tolerated, that
Party policies must be faithfully implemented, that the
PLA must learn humility, and that the authority of mili-
tary administrators vis-a-vis civilian Party cadres is in
general to be reduced -- in other words, that the PLA
is to be returned to a more nearly traditional role. It
seems likely that the chastened PLA -- that is, the great
majority of PLA leaders and officers -- will accept this,
because the PLA has been told too that an obedient and
humble PLA need not fear another large-scale purge, on
the order of 1966-67.
Actually, a fairly substantial purge of the PLA
has already been carried out, particularly if those who
ctropped out of sight in or just after the early months of
1971 are included. However, some of those purged have pre-
sumably been charged with "arrogance and complacency" and
other offenses, not directly related to the purge of Lin's
group. Moreove;, the purge since the time of the purge
of Lin's group in September has apparently been on a scale
smaller than might have been expected -- somewhere between
the small number implied by the Party and the large number
that would have fallen if all of the proteges and Lin
and those purged with him had been included.
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There has apparently been no general exodus of
PLA figures from the central government machinery. Almost
all of the PLA veterans known or believed to head com-
missions and ministries have made appearances since the
purge, and several of them have been identified in these
posh. Indeed, the one new Minister surfaced since the
purge is a PLA man.* The one visible difference, since
the purge, is that PLA officers in government posts have
tactfully ceased to wear their PLA uniforms. It is pos-
sible that -- apart from the officers of the Ministry
of National Defense -- these veteran PLA officers no
longer have any PLA connection, as there are no military
ranks to be retained. They may simply be ex-PLA men,
and may be reliably responsive to Chou En-lai and his
lieutenants for the same reasons that induced Chou to
appoint them in the first place. With rare exceptions
(e.g. Pai Hsiang-kuo, who remains active), these PLA
figures in government posts have not been regarded as
proteges of Lin and other, purged leaders, but rather as
reliable men with proven managerial skills.
For more than five years the 11 Military Region
(MR) headquarters have been the only regional authorities
in China. Apart from the concentration of Lin Piao's
proteges in concurrent posts in the MAC standing committee
On PLA leader who had been serving as a Deputy Minister
of Foreign Affairs has recently been reassigned as an
ambassador, but another has replaced him,
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and MAC administrative unit and General Staff prior to
the purge, the most striking concentration of Lin or
Lin/Huang proteges was found in these headquarters, with
ten of the 11 under such commands at the time of the
purge. As noted earlier, these men were in general not
identified with Lin as closely -- not given the same
degree of preferment during the Cultural Revolution --
as were the central leaders purged with him, but they
were close enough to have their own status brought into
question with Liligs fall. If the principal/protege rela-
tionship were the main criterion f_r rendering judgments
on other military leaders after the purge, most of the
top-level leaders in the MR headquarters could be expected
to fall.
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There were and are, however, two strong factors
favoring most of the MR leaders, at least for the time
being. One is that some are known -- and others presumed --
to have assured Mao of their support before his purge of
the central leaders. Another is that a large-scale purge
of the MR leaders -- on whom the central leaders still
depend for the effective government of China outside
Peking -- is unlikley while the central military leader-
ship is still being reorganized.
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It may be that several of the MR leaders now in
place and apparently in favor will be removed in the
course of the next year or two, when the leaders in Peking
feel secure enough to take action against certain of them
left in place for the time being in the interest of
stability after this first round of examination of them.
But it looks as though most of them -- including many of
the Lin/Huang proteges who occupied more than h7,1f of the
top 44 positions in the MR headquarters at the time of
Lin's and Huang's fall -- are going to survive.
It has been surmised that one consequence of the
purge of the central military leaders may be to put an
end to the system of military-political leadership in
which an MR commander or first political officer is con-
currently the first secretary of the provincial Party com-
mittee in which his MR headquarters is located. Develop-
ments since the purge suggest that this may have been under
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consideration -- with each case examined, and decided on
its merits -- but will not be general. Of the ten MR
commanders who have held these top military and top poli-
tical positions in their areas concurrently, three have
now been expressly identified in both posts since the
purge. These are Hsu Shih-yu in Nanking, the late Chang
Kuo-hua in Chengtu, and most recently Chen Hsi-lien in
Shenyang.* In the other seven cases in which such dual
identifications could have been made when the leader ap-
peared, the media have been evasive.
As has been seen, the provincial leadership has a
mixed military-political character. Of the 29 provincial-
level Party committees (26 provinces, three major muni-
cipalities), ten are or at least have been headed by MR
leaders,' and in every one of the other CD cases the first
secretary of the Party committee is known or believed to
be the provincial MD or municipal garrison commander or
first political officer, usually the latter. In those 19
committees not headed by 'IR leaders, the Party committee
post is generally more important than the corresponding
military post.
Of the 29 provincial-level first secretaries or
acting first secretaries, only two -- Wang Chia-tao in
*There is the possibly irrelevant fact that at least
two of those three MR leaders -- Hsu and Chang -- had been
shown special favcr by Mao himself in the past. Another
Mao favorite, Li Ta-chang, may move up to replace Chang
as first political officer in Szechuan.
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Heilungkiang and Lan I-flung in Kweichow, both PLA men
-- have failed to make appearances, in apparent favor,
since September.* This figure is to a degree misleading,
as others have been missing more recently: the examina-
tion of the provincial committees has certainly not been
completed. But the general picture for the provincial
first secretaries looks to be at least as good as for the
MR leaders: most of them -- probably a large majority --
will survive.
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The provincial-level military leadership (including
the three major municipal garrisons) overlaps even more
considerably with the provincial Party committee leadership
than suggested above. In those cases in which the MD
or Garrison commander or first political officer is the
first secretary, the other is usually one of the subordinate
secretaries. And in almost all provincial committees
there is at least one additional military man, sometimes
several.
Relatively few -- not more than a dozen -- of the
provincial-level commanders and first political officers
of provincial MD's and major municipal garrisons have
been regarded as proteges of Lin and Huang, who (outside
Peking) preferred to concentrate their proteges in the
far more powerful MR headquarters. Some of these pro-
vincial and municipal leaders too were given an opportunity
to assure Mao of their support before the purge of Septem-
ber 1971. Four provincial MDs -- Liaoning, Shansi, Ninghsia,
and Tsinghai -- have apparently been given new commanders
since the purge, but in at least three of these cases the
ex-commander remains in favor and in another key post.
At least three second-ranking provincial secretaries
-- in Chekiang, Fukien, and Hupei -- are believed to have
been purged with Lin's group. All were PLA men, two of
them Air Force officers.
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Eighteen provincial MD commanders or first political
officers, or their equivalents -- leaders of armies, for
example -- are presently missing. None of the missing has
thus far been named in Party documents and briefings as
implicated with Lin's group, but some may yet be. Here
again, some Lin/Huang proteges remain active and in apparent
favor.
As at the regional level, some provincial military
leaders who are concurrently the provincial first secre-
taries may have to give up one of their posts. There has
been only one case (Jen Jung in Tibet) since thern purge in
which an individual has been solidly identified as holding
the top military and political posts concurrently.* More-
over, there have been some cases in which positive action
has apparently been taken to deprive a leader of one of
his posts, or to prevent a military leader from filling
a vacant political post. For example, in both Shansi
and Ninghsia the commander/first secretary has apparently
been replaced as commander while remaining as first secre-
tary; in Hunan, the first secretary of which was transferred
to Peking, neither of the military men who were second-and-
third-ranking secretaries has been moved up; and similarly,
in Tsinghai, the first secretary either retains the title
after his transfer to Peking or it has been withheld from
the ranking military figures in the province. There is
no apparent intention to remove the military leaders from
all political posts or the 2olitical leaders from all
military posts, but the earlier concentrations of power
*Again, the media have been evasive, suggesting inde-
cision. E.g. a first secretary is identified as a poli-
tical officer rather than first, or as a political officer
of the MR rather than first political officer of the MD,
or as a "responsible person."
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may be reduced. Also, more old Party cadres may become
political officers (cf. the recent appointments of Li
Ta-chang in the Chengtu MR and of Wang Hung-wen to the
Shanghai Garrison).
The Present First Team: Mao (who is demonstrably
not incapacitated) looks to be still the Party's dominant
figure, in the terms in which he described his situation
to Edgar Snow in late 1970; that is, he points the Taneral
direction, formulates or approves the formulation of the
regime's principal policies, and signs directives, leaving
day-to-day operations to Chou En-lai and Chou's Party
apparatus and government machinery. And he is probably
still dominant in the same sense as seemed to be the case
prior to the purge of Lin Piao and his proteges: namely,
that he has the power to elevate or to purge any other
Party leader or small group of leaders.
It should be noted that Mao's domination appears
to be increasingly qualified in important respects. He
is old, his health is probably deteriorating, he is absent
from Peking much of the time. It seems doubtful that he
could point China in any general direction other than
the one he has been taking since the Ninth Party Congress
-- doubtful, that is, that he could turn China hard left
again. He relies for the formulation of many and the
implementation of all policies primarily on a man, Chou
En-lai, whose predilections are not the same as his. He
has probaply (as always before) created new opponents in
the latest purge. He has lost prestige for his demonstrated
bad judgment in selecting successors/
/He is still heavily dependent on the PLA for 25X1
governing China outside Peking. Should he change his
mind again and try to pyrge Chou En-lai and Chou's group
(in favor, say, of the civilian radicals), or try to
return the PLA rapidly to its traditional role (replacing
all of the PLA figures -- including Lin's proteges --
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who head Party committees throughout China), there is
considerable doubt that he could do it; it took him more
than four years to purge Liu Shao-chi and his proteges,
about two years to purge Lin Piao's group, and his time
is running out. Increasingly, his lieutenants will be
looking past him to the post-Mao situation, trying to
secure their own positions by forming alliances and
reaching agreements on policy with other leaders. More-
over, this has
probably already set off a process in which developments
and decisions increasingly get away from Mao.*
Nevertheless, the main lesson of the past ten
years, for other Party leaders, has to be that one chal-
lenges Mao, or takes action behind Mao's back, only at
great peril. Though somewhat tarnished, Mao is still
the boss, still the source of ultimate authority. Mao
has shown that he alone has been able to command the suf-
ficient allegiance of other Party leaders in a showdown
with another Party leader or group. One would suppose that
other Party leaders, while making what arrangements they
can for their futures, would continue to try above all
not to provoke the old man's suspicion or hostility. The
chief near-term threat to Mao from other leaders looks
still to be the possibility of assassination, commissioned
by some comrade more intelligent and circumspect than Lin
Piao. Mao's fear of assassination, evident in 1965 and
stimulated again by the Lin Piao case, may have been
a factor in his failure to appear as usual for May Day.
Below Mao's level, as noted often before, the
situation in the Chinese leadership can never be described
as "stable," because Mao himself is not stable. Not
even Chou En-lai, now clearly his favorite lieutenant,
can regard himself as invulnerable. But Chou seems to
manage his relationship with Mao very well, and seems to
4Mao was out of sight from late February to late June,
failing in that period to meet with two distinguished
visitors whom he probably would have met if he had been
feeling up to it. He reappeared for Madame Bandaranaike
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be in a strong position to resist any challenge by any
leader below Mao's level. As the Party's de facto
secretary-general, he is at the top of the Party apparatus,
now supervised (and probably loosely) by Mao only. In
this role he has probably acquired supervisory authority
over the daily operations of the MAC and his old friend
Yeh Chien-ying (who is also responsible to Mao as chair-
man of the MAC). He remains at the head of the government,
directing the work of a very active vice-premier (his
friend Li Hsien-nien) and of another vice-premiur and old
friend (Nieh Jung-chen) who may be becoming active again,
and of what is still a large number of commissions and
ministries, including the Ministry of National Defense
(Yeh Chien-ying again). The general direction of Chinese
policy -- both domestic and foreign -- in the past three
years has clearly been congenial to Chou, and he himself
has probably formulated some of the most important of
these policies, getting Mao's approval and giving Mao the
credit. President Nixon's visit was a visible personal
triumph for Chou.
Chou is careful not to commit the mistake cornitted
by Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao: he is careful, that is, not
to appear to be challenging or rivalling Mao. As observed
during President Nixon's visit, Chou is very deferential to
Mao: he gives Mao the credit for formulating even those
policies which he has himself has formulated (even trifling
things, such as the table-tennis team's slogan of "friend-
ship first, competition second," which was original with
Chou), and he is careful to get Mao's approval for each
important step he takes, for example.in drafting a joint
communique. As noted above, even Chou is not truly safe;
but it seems likely that the very clever and experienced
Chou will survive and prosper.
Mao and Chou are now the only two primary leaders.
They seem to be operating with a relatively small central
team, as was the case in the year prior to the Ninth Party
Congress of April 1969. Seven members of that 14-man
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elite team of 1968-69 have survived: Mao, Chou, Madame
Mao, the propaganda specialists Chang Chun-chiao and Yao
Wen-yuan, and the security specialists Kang Sheng and
Wang Tung-hsing. (However, two of these, Madame Mao and
Kang, appear to be little active, in effect set aside.)
The six purged were two members of the Politburo standing
committee (Lin Piao and Chen Po-ta) and four close proteges
of Lin's. Another security specialist (Hsieh Fu-chih)
died in favor. The missing faces appear to have been re-
placed by: (a) five or six military leaders, Yeh Chien-
ying, Li Te-sheng, Su Yu, Chiang Tsai-chien, Wang Hsin-ting,
and perhaps Liu Hsien-chuan; (b) the three old Party
cadres Chi Teng-kuei, Hua Kuo-feng and Wu Te; (c) Chou's
factotum Li Hsien-nien; and (d) the foreign affairs special-
ists Keng Piao and Chi Peng-fei. Several of these who
are not now members of the Politburo are expected to be
added to that body in the course of restoring it to a
strength of 20 or more. One recent appearance of "lead-
ing members of the...Party and state" has suggested that
the old Marshal Hsu Hsiang-chien may be restored to thE
Politburo, that the veteran Navy commander Hsiao Ching-
kuang may be added, and that the very old (80) writer Kuo
Mo-jo may also be under consideration. All CCP Politburos
have included venerable figures of little importance, like
Hsu and Kuo.
Prior to the latest purges, the organizational
core of power had been the Politburo standing committee,
which made those decisions which the Party's officers
(then Mao and Lin) had not already made, including the
decisions as to which matters to pass to the full Politburo
for discussion and a possible vote. If the standing com-
mittee is again active, the obvious candidates for the
vacancies are Yeh Chien-ying, Li Hsien-nien (both close
to Chou), and one or more of the younger people more closely
identified with Mao himself (i.e. Chang or Yao).
The most important functions of the central Party
apparatus are those of contrbl of the military establishment,
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political control of economic organs, political security
(investigation and evaluation), Party organizational
work, propaganda, and liaison with foreign Communist
parties. The ranking figures in these fields are all
members of the small team named above.
The standing committee of the MAC now probably con-
sists more or less of Yeh, the less active vice-chairmen
Hsu Hsiang-chien and Nieh Jung-chen, the GPD director
Li Te-sheng, the former C/S Su Yu, the deputy chiefs
Chiang Tsai-chien and Hsiang Chung-hua and Wang Hsin-
ting (Wang has been reported as acting C/S), the mili-
tarily unlocated Liu Hsien-chuan, Hsiao Ching-kuang,
the Peking Garrison commander Wu Chung and first poli-
tical officer Wu Te, the Politburo alternates Wang Tung-
hsing and Chi Teng-kuei, Deputy Minister of Defense Wang
Shu-sheng, and some Military Region leaders who do not
often get to Peking. The economic specialist on the
first team is Li Hsien-nien, and Hua Kuo-feng is said
to be in training for this work (which he used to do
in Hunan). Political security looks to be primarily in
the hands of Mao's man Wang Tung-hsing, who still heads
the Central Committee staff office, with assists from
Li Te-sheng and Wu Te. Party organizational work is
apparently being supervised by either Chang Chun-chiao
or Hua Kuo-feng (or possibly both), although a PLA
officer may be the director of the Organization Depart-
ment. Chang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-yuan still supervise
propaganda work, and Yao may be the director of the
Propaganda Department. The International Liaison Depart-
ment is known to be headed by Keng Piao.
It is still not known whether Chou En-lai as de
facto secretary-general is working with a small de facto
secretariat or simply with the MAC leaders and central
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department chiefs named above.* The obvious candidates
for a Secretariat include the obvious candidates for the
Politburo standing committee -- Yeh, Li, Chang, Yao --
plus, one would think, Wang Tung-hsing and Hua Kuo-feng.
The necessary specialties would be represented in such
a group.
Will this team survive? or will this one too lose
half of its members in another convulsion, when they are
found to be "disloyal" to Mao, refusing to accept his
institutional arrangements or to carry out his policies?
Another genuine challenge to Mao seems unlikely.
Although this judgment proved to be mistaken in the case
of Lin Piao and his closest proteges, Chou En-lai and his
friends and proteges ought to be happy with the present
arrangements and policies. It will take some time -- one
would think, years -- to exhaust the possibilities of the
present policies and thus pose the issue of "loyalty" in
a sharp form by a sudden reversal of course. Apart from
the question of whether Mao still has "years," Chou at
least has always been able to execute these reversals.
The present military leaders, some of them close to Chou,
look to be both more docile and under better control than
Lin's group -- and are not proteges of a single military
leader, as were those purged with Lin Piao. The remaining
civilian "radicals" of the old central CRG may be less than
happy with the present policies, but they have no base of
power from which to challenge them; the most important
and active of these "radicals," Chang and Yao, with Chi
Teng-kuei and perhaps soon Hua Kno-feng, constitute the
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relatively young group in the Politburo, those who, if
they remain on their good behavior, have some chance of
remaining in the leadership for many years to come.
Mao himself seems to remain the principal threat
to the members of this team. It is hard at best to carry
out Mao's policies to his satisfaction, even without the
problems of abrupt reversals of course and the search for
scapegoats. Under the pressure of Mao's demands
-- currently the demands for a Party apparatus and military
establishment under strict civilian control, and (again
in recognition of realities) for repudiation of the "ultra-
left" excesses of the Cultural Revolution -- any given
leader can be found to be a secret sympathizer With Lin
Piao, or to be engaged in "conspiracy," or to be deliber-
ately obstructing Mao's policies. Moreover, the still-
mismatched groups of Mao's lieutenants can be expected to
continue to compete for Mao's favor, even if they do not
challenge Mao himself in any way. Thus it can be judged
with some confidence that some members of Mao's current
central team -- both military and civilian -- will fall
before Mao dies. Should Mao die before Chou, Chou could
probably dominate the leadership (although not to the
degree that Mao has dominated it), and, if so, could be
expected to make further changes, reducing the importance
of whatever "radical" ideologues remain. Should both
Mao and Chou die in the next year or two, no single figure
among the current leaders would seem strong enough to
dominate the Party in any sense. There would have to
be a "collective," whether called that or not. Ironically,
the PLA, which has been put down so hard in the past year,
would in those circumstances probably be in the best
position to provide the dominant group or the dominant
members of the group.
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